Chantal Joffe completed a Foundation Course at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in London (1987-1988) before gaining a Bachelor (Hons) in Fine Art at Glasgow School of Art (1988-1991) and a Master of Fine Art at the Royal College of Art in London (1992-1994).

C. Joffe is a figurative artist working in oil paint and pastel, from very large to small scale, from life and from photographs.

She primarily engages with portraits, typically women, both as individuals and in groups, particularly those who are significant figures in her life. These portraits record the passage of time and reveal an interest in portraying how people and their bodies change over time; collectively they act as a visual diary but one in which everyday events are recorded on canvas making the ordinary into something extraordinary. These portraits can, especially in regard to the self-portraits, be frank and unflinching, not only witnessing how people’s faces and/or their bodies age but also capturing their emotional state at the time. Taken together these often form series over extensive periods of time. For instance, C. Joffe has painted her mother Daryll for over thirty years. Likewise, C. Joffe has recorded her daughter Esme’s passage through her life, from a young child into adulthood often in the company of friends. There is also a very extensive body of self-portraits in which the artist appears clothed, semi-naked and naked. Starting on New Year’s Day 2018, C. Joffe painted a self-portrait every day for a year. These were exhibited across two sites by Victoria Miro in London (11 April to 18 May 2019). Working in a very fluid and expressionistic manner, Joffe explores personal relationships and intimacy, particularly those between mothers and their children over time. Close and long-standing friends, such as the British painter Ishbel Myerscough (b. 1968), whom she met at the Glasgow School of Art and with whom she showed at the National Portrait Gallery (Friendship Portraits, 11 June to 27 September 2015), and her daughter Bella also feature, as do the British art historian and curator Gemma Blackshaw and the British author and cultural critic Olivia Laing.

More recently C. Joffe showed her work in conversation with Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907) an artist who has been an important influence: Personal Feeling Is the Main Thing presented at The Lowry in Salford (19 May to 2 September 2018).

Among her prizes and awards are the Elizabeth Greenshields Award (1993), the Paris Studio Award, Royal College of Art (1993), the Delfina Studio Trust Award (1994-96), the Abbey Scholarship (British School in Rome, 1998-99) and the Charles Wollaston Award, 238th Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts (2006). C. Joffe was elected a Royal Academician in 2013.

C. Joffe has an extensive exhibition history, her first group exhibition Whitworth Young Contemporaries was held at the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester (1993) and her first monographic exhibition travelled in 1999 from the Feigen Contemporary in New York to the Galleria Marabini in Bologna and Il Capricorno in Venice.

Examples of C. Joffe’s work can be found in numerous international collections including the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nantes.