Artist Statement

Shelagh Howard is an award-winning photographer and visual artist whose work explores the universality of the human experience, with the human form as both focus and framework. Through her unflinching lens, she invites viewers to dismantle the slick edifice of artificially constructed identities and to instead turn inwards and reflect on the nature of the true, vulnerable self. Working in nudes and portraits, Shelagh leverages multiple and long exposures to create dichotomous images that are both vividly dynamic and achingly minimalistic.
Each image asks viewers to see its subject captured outside of time, and to consider what it means to belong to and in a body. Through her unflinching eyes and lens, Shelagh asks us to look beyond what is culturally prescribed, and to instead see the universal truths that we all carry within us, wrapped in our flesh but never truly concealed by it.

Biography

A Toronto native, Shelagh studied psychology at The University of Toronto, and photography at Ryerson University, and has since created and exhibited works in Canada, the US and Europe, building a strong professional reputation. She has been published in Songlines Magazine UK, Opera Canada, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, The Toronto Star, VICE magazine, on billboards in Times Square, NYC and Dundas Square, Toronto, and in press and digital media internationally. Shelagh’s work was selected for the juried SNAP - ACT Silent Auction (March 2019 and 2020) and the Live Auction (2021) and she received an honourable mention at the 14th Annual Julia Margaret Cameron Awards in Barcelona, Spain. In 2021, she received the 2021 Artist Award from the Cornell Henry Art Gallery in San Diego. Shelagh has exhibited both at home in Canada and abroad in the U.S. and Europe.