Meet the Artist Behind Lily Allen’s ‘West End Girl’ Album Cover

"Who is Madeline?" you may be singing to yourself after listening to Lily Allen's latest album, West End Girl.

A better question might be: Who is Nieves González, the artist behind the album’s cover portrait?

González is a visual artist from Spain whose work draws from the dramatic power of the Spanish Baroque but ignores its reverence.

Here, González reflects on her collaboration with Allen and the visual instincts that shaped the album cover.

What was your first “anchor point” in collaborating with Lily that set the tone for the project to come, whether it was a color, emotion or a memory?

I thought of a portrait hanging in an old art museum. In that pose and that powerful gaze that pierces through the viewer and demands to be remembered, as if the image carried weight in history.

That's what I wanted to achieve with Lily: to convey the imposing and majestic energy of a 16th-century portrait.

Your work "builds a visual territory where pictorial memory and contemporary urgency converge." How do you choose which elements of classical visual language to preserve, and which to interrupt or transform when bringing them into a contemporary context?

I seek to preserve what remains essential, what maintains its relevance: the atmosphere, certain iconographic elements, or particular narratives.

From there, I translate them into a contemporary language, a kind of new Costumbrismo where everything is built with the materials and concerns of our time.

That choice emerges organically; the bridge between past and present is, in reality, a present shaped by its own legacy. Looking backward thus becomes a way of understanding and constructing ourselves.

Many album covers attempt to define an identity, while your work often embraces ambiguity and layered meaning. What did you feel needed to remain unresolved in this project?

What I prefer to always leave unresolved is the interpretation.

As you rightly point out, I'm interested in ambiguity, that in-between space where things can be several things at once. I work primarily with portraiture and, through it, I try to construct open narratives, where each gaze or gesture suggests more than it shows.

I like to think that the works function as mirrors in which each viewer projects their own imaginary, their experiences or emotions.

That's why both the expressions of the characters and the objects or settings that accompany them are conceived to invite personal reading, not to impose a closed meaning.

Nieves González is a visual artist whose work draws from classical painting and establishes a dialogue with contemporary contexts, engaging with the aesthetic of a generational language that reflects the complexity of our time.

Her pieces reference Western pictorial tradition, particularly from the 16th and 17th centuries, both in technique and iconography, which she blends with contemporary elements to subvert the image and create new narratives. As part of a society dominated by visual culture, her work explores a universe where the classical and the contemporary intertwine, revealing the depth of our relationship with images.

She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the University of Seville (2019) and a Master’s degree in Art: Idea and Production from the same institution (2021). Her work has been featured at JustMad art fair (2025) and has received several awards throughout her career.