Ella Shepard has recently received an MA in Painting from Arts University Bournemouth (2023). She currently works in her studio exhibiting regularly across the country and worldwide. Ella has been commissioned by Modern Art Oxford, and Arts Council England and her paintings can be viewed as part of Oxford’s Public Art Collection. Awards include Jorge Aguilar-Agon Artist Award, Lena Fritsch’s Award (Ashmolean Museum), The Eaton Fund and Jackson’s Painting Prize Longlist. With two solo exhibitions to date, her painting was selected by Tracey Emin for the Margate Art Prize shortlist in 2023.
Ella is a painter, drawing on memories to create works that deeply connect with time, flux and instability of moments. Moments shift, memories change, lights flicker and suddenly we are experiencing something completely altered and fragmented. Figures emerge from layers of paint, existing in a state of flux between themselves and their collapsing dream-like environments. The layering of marks reaches disrupted abstraction through the process of trying to remember. ‘And all is always now’, (featured in Ones to Watch 2024) from T.S Eliot’s poem ‘Four Quartets’ explores the interplay of poetic language and fractured narratives and the connection between word, consciousness and intimacy.
