About The Artist
Bachelor of Arts, Education 1989
Stephanie Sheppard is a West Australian artist, who works in oil paint predominantly, and more recently, acrylic and mixed media. She has always had an interest in art but became a more serious painter when she retired and moved overseas in 2006 to live in Angola for five years and then Kazakhstan for six years. During this time, she exhibited her work on several occasions in collaboration with other resident artists at the Celamar Gallery, Luanda, Angola.
In Atyrau, Kazakhstan she teamed up with acclaimed Kazakh artist, Rafael Slekenov, for a number of collaborative exhibitions and he invited her to hold a solo exhibition at his Tengri Art Gallery, Atyrau, Kazakhstan. Her work was well received and her paintings now reside in individual collections all over the world.
While living internationally, she had the opportunity to study part-time at the London Atelier of Representational Art (LARA), where she was able to extend her skills in portraiture painting and life drawing.
Since returning to her home town, Perth, Western Australia she has continued to paint, taking inspiration from the familiar surroundings of Perth including the beautiful Swan River and the landscapes of regional Western Australia. She has sought to further her skills as an artist, studying Printmaking at Fremantle Arts Centre, producing artwork in relief and intaglio printmaking.
ARTIST STATEMENT...
When I create, I am fully engaged in a completely selfish pursuit to produce work that expresses my appreciation of my surroundings that I have been lucky enough to be born into and currently live. I was born and grew up in the goldfields and later in the wheatbelt of WA until I moved to Perth in my early teens. The unique landscapes of those regions still take my breath away. On my return to Perth, after living and experiencing an international life, I couldn’t wait to paint and draw the familiar and immerse myself in my much loved surroundings that I hadn’t realised I had missed so intensely. I work in both acrylic and oil on canvas, and now I am also enjoying exploring and producing work through printmaking. My method is always to work directly onto the canvas to produce an expressive, emotionally accurate rendition of my feelings for the subject.