Holly Shepheard works across various artistic disciplines to produce work that is both personal and symbolic. She works with ideas related to subjectivity, materiality and transformation. Shepheard’s most recent paintings have evolved from an interest in the way new visual forms emerge from the process of erasure, obscuring and metamorphosis.

Each piece has undergone many physical manifestations, each layer complete in itself before Shepheard moves to erase, conceal and cover. These alternately transparent and opaque layers act as protective skins. Not wanting to pre-construct, Shepheard relies on instinct; that strong natural impulse to work with the fluidity of paint and the mutability made available to the maker through process.

Shepheard completed a Diploma of Make-up Artistry in 1998 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Elam School of Fine Arts, the University of Auckland in 2006. Over the past eleven years, between exhibiting her paintings and prints she has worked as a makeup artist on numerous New Zealand short films and music videos. Shepheard recognises this overlap between disciplines as challenging and beneficial to her art practice.