Artist Statement

Shelagh Howard is an award winning photo-based, queer visual artist whose work delves into the layered terrain of memory, identity, and embodied experience. Through long exposures and the human figure, she explores the construction of selfhood - interrogating themes of gender, generational trauma, vulnerability and intimacy.

With an unflinching gaze, she peels back the slick surfaces of constructed identity to reveal the tenderness beneath. Her images thread motion and stillness, capturing the ephemeral shadows of the self and offering a fleeting glimpse of what lingers behind our carefully assembled facades.

Biography

Based in Kjipuktuk, the traditional and unceded territory of the Mi'kmaq people, 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. 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 and the 26th 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, and she and was in the top 200 finalists of Photolucida Critical Mass in 2025.