Jo Peel and the Art of a Changing City

Jo Peel is an artist known for her evocative cityscapes, large-scale murals and intricate line drawings. Paintings that capture the ever-changing urban environment. Originally from Sheffield and now based in London. Her work explores what it means to live in a landscape defined by transformation. Where progress and memory collide on every street corner.

Peel’s paintings and murals are full of quiet observation. They record the evolving story of the city, its cranes, cafés, factories and flats. Revealing not just how places look, but how they feel. Jo’s work reminds us that cities are more than architecture. They’re made up of people, communities, and the traces they leave behind.

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Reading the City

For Peel, buildings are storytellers. “I’m drawn to the structures that give a place its identity,” she says. “I’m trying to read the story of a place in its buildings and translate that into an image.”

Cities fascinate her precisely because they’re never still. Her work invites us to pause and look more closely. To notice the layers of history and the tension between old and new. Capturing the spaces that still hold meaning amid change.

A Conversation About Gentrification

Much of Peel’s art revolves around urban gentrification. Something she has observed both in her native Sheffield and in East London. She sees it as an ongoing dialogue rather than a simple critique. A conversation about belonging, identity and the shifting sense of home.

“When somewhere changes” she reflects, “what does it mean to the people who were there, to the people who are there now, and to the people who will be there next?”

Her cityscapes reveal the constant negotiation between progress and preservation. It’s an unflinching but empathetic look at the realities of living in a city that’s always moving forward. These are the kinds of places that fascinate her. Places that hold a sense of community even as the skyline changes around them.

Drawing as a Way of Seeing

Peel’s creative process begins with drawing. An act of close observation that turns the everyday into something extraordinary. “When I’m sat drawing something,” she explains, “I’m seeing it for the first time. You notice the quirks and details that you’d usually miss.”

Her fine, deliberate line work gives those cityscapes a distinctive texture. Rich in rhythm and character. By leaving people out of her scenes, a deliberate act, she allows the buildings themselves to tell the story.

A Call to Care

Though her work often deals with change, it isn’t pessimistic. Instead, it’s a call to notice and care. To value the places we pass by every day and recognise the beauty in what remains. “I want people to feel compassion for the place they live,” she says. “To pause and look with care.”

Always Exploring

For Jo Peel, creativity is a journey without a final destination. Each piece becoming a conversation with the next. A continuous search for new ways to understand the city and her place within it.

“There’s always something around the corner,” she reflects. “I’m always learning, experimenting, trying to say something new. It’s about understanding myself, but also what it means to be human and live in a big city, surrounded by all these other people.”

And that’s the beauty of her work. An artist capturing the heartbeat of the modern city, where change is constant. Where meaning is found in the moments that endure.

Jo Peel was interviewed at her studio in Tottenham during September 2025. Her exhibition ‘Places and Spaces’ with Maxine Gregson is showing at the Atom Gallery from 8-29 November 2025. Jo’s instagram is here and her website here.

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