Adelaide Shalhope, ‘Cockatoo Mating Dance'

Throughout my adult life I have sought to go willingly into the unknown. This is an ongoing recognition that embracing my own vulnerabilities allows me to fully release my spirit, and in turn, my imagination.

I don’t know where my life, or my work, will take me. Like my paintings sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes relationships are in conflict and yet manage to hang together. Many questions have no final answer. This is the process: to somehow manage to be in the deep end of what is not being seen. Isn’t this where we experience the creative chaos necessary to allow ourselves to see what is possible? Isn't this how we grow? Isn't this how we awaken?

My job as an artist is ultimately to listen. I then respond. I play. I express, hide, repress, awaken, retreat, and express, again. Each mark, each gesture, is intuitive - a moment of experimentation that begets another. Each artwork is the unknown communicating itself into being.

My professional creative career began in the U.S. (Boston) in the 1990’s as a sole proprietor textile artist. For many years I designed and created large installations and bespoke homeware and fashion accessories for local shops and interior decorators. I then moved to the North West of England in 2009 and my more traditional textile practice transitioned into creating multi-faceted mixed media works. This shift was partly inspired by several lengthy visits, and a six-month living period in Arctic Norway (Tromsø). In 2017 after taking a course at the Glasgow School of Art, I began painting.

I now live and work in the countryside north of Glasgow.