Tori Pounds paints from the place where memory, observation and imagination stop being distinguishable. Working from the United Kingdom, she builds figurative compositions around intimacy, relationships and the slipperiness of personal identity — scenes that feel remembered and invented at the same time, which is a fair description of how memory actually works.
Who is Tori Pounds?
Tori Pounds is a British contemporary painter working in oil, mixed media and pastel. Her subject is people — specifically what happens between them, and what a person can and cannot know about themselves. She is represented by Art of NOMA, and eleven of her works are currently available through the gallery.
What distinguishes the work is a refusal to resolve. These are figurative paintings, clearly legible as scenes, but they withhold exactly enough that you cannot quite place them. That is not an accident of technique; it is the engine of the whole practice.
Why does she work at such different scales?
Pounds works across an unusually wide range of formats, and the range is not incidental. Motherly (200 × 210 cm, USD 7,350), Solitude and Snow (both 210 × 180 cm, USD 6,050) are large enough to meet a viewer at body scale — the figures are not observed from across a room but encountered.
Then there is Moonlit Room at 45 × 35 cm (USD 1,950), and People Sketch, a pastel work on paper at USD 600. Same preoccupations, entirely different register. The small works read like something glimpsed; the large ones like something you are standing inside.
The small works read like something glimpsed. The large ones read like something you are standing inside.
How does she handle intimacy without sentiment?
The recurring subject is closeness between people, handled without softness. Kissers and Swimmers (USD 1,000 each) take moments that could easily tip into tenderness and hold them at a slight distance, so what registers is the awkwardness and specificity of real bodies rather than an idea of romance.
Self Portrait Mexico (mixed media, USD 4,000) and The Graveyard Book (USD 2,000) show the same instinct turned on the artist and on narrative. Dorothy Shoes and Bacon Butty bring in an English deadpan — the ruby slippers and the fried-bacon sandwich sitting in the same body of work as a 210 cm painting about solitude, without either one undercutting the other.
That range of register is rarer than it sounds. Most painters who can do the monumental cannot do the throwaway, and most who can do the throwaway never attempt the monumental. Holding both without irony is the thing to watch in her career.
Why does her work feel half-remembered?
Because she does not resolve it. Faces and settings carry enough information to read as specific and not enough to be identified. That withholding is the mechanism: a viewer supplies the missing detail from their own memory, which is why these paintings tend to feel personal to people who have no connection to the scene depicted.
It also explains why her work rewards living with rather than looking at. A painting that hands over its full meaning on first viewing has nothing left for the second year. These do not, which is the quality that separates a work you keep from a work you eventually move on.
Where should you start with Tori Pounds?
Her catalogue divides cleanly. Under USD 2,000 — People Sketch, Kissers, Swimmers, Moonlit Room — is a genuine entry point, not a lesser tier. Above USD 5,000, the large-scale oils are the works that will define how her career is read later.
People Sketch at USD 600 or Kissers at USD 1,000. Same eye, smaller register.
Moonlit Room, 45 × 35 cm. Small enough to live with daily, unresolved enough to keep working on you.
Motherly or Solitude. The large-scale oils are the career-defining works.
Dorothy Shoes or Bacon Butty. The humour is real and it is not a lesser mode.
Every price is published on the work. Art of NOMA is an online gallery, so nothing here requires you to ask what something costs before you know whether it is worth asking about.
Verified 25 August 2026. All eleven works, prices, dimensions and availability were read directly from the live Tori Pounds collection and its individual product pages on that date. Prices are listed in USD as published by the gallery; availability changes when a work sells.
Art of NOMA is an official Artsy partner gallery based in Mexico City, representing around forty contemporary artists and more than 250 original works across painting, photography, print and sculpture.
Frequently asked questions
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Sources
- Art of NOMA — Tori Pounds collection — the eleven available works, with prices, media and dimensions; read 25 Aug 2026
- Art of NOMA — Motherly — dimensions (200 × 210 cm), medium and price; read 25 Aug 2026
- Art of NOMA — Solitude — dimensions (210 × 180 cm) and price; read 25 Aug 2026
- Art of NOMA — People Sketch — medium (pastel on paper) and price; read 25 Aug 2026
See the work in full. Browse every available piece on the Tori Pounds collection, explore more original paintings, or read our guide to how much to spend on your first artwork.