Get to know artShane

I am an artist and social media designer with a background in photography, graphics and fine art trained at Bournemouth College of Art and Design, where my work began to take shape after winning Best Student Entry in a nationwide magazine competition.

My work focuses on communities of artists, social inclusivity, and fair pay for artists. I have collaborated with local schools, charities, and festivals that raise significant funds for good causes.

My fine art uses a highly dextrous process I term heat-press collage, combining inked film and extreme heat. Alongside this, I create visually distinctive social media campaigns that prioritise genuine engagement. Working under the name artShane, I select projects aligned with my values and health-conscious working practice.

Gallery

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Art Projects Section

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artShane's mission

I first studied art at technical college in Broadstairs, where I discovered that I had spent my entire school life unknowingly navigating dyslexia. I went on to study photography at Bournemouth College of Art and Design, where the foundations of my current creativity began to take shape. During this time, I won Best Student Entry in a nationwide magazine competition, with the work exhibited at a Covent Garden gallery.

My art career evolved significantly following the birth of my eldest child 21 years ago. As my partner found the intensity of early parenthood challenging, we made the decision that I would step back from an already unconventional employment life to freelance from home and be the primary carer. Balancing creative work, emotional labour, and family organisation has been demanding, but deeply fulfilling over the past two decades.

Much of my work centres on community-focused art. When my children were young I regularly collaborated with local schools, with permanent works currently installed on the Worstead train station platform building. Alongside this, I manage social media campaigns for charity events — including a festival that raises and donates nearly £20,000 annually to good causes. Social inclusivity and fair play underpin all aspects of my work.

In 2020, my fine art work reached a particularly strong period, with opportunities for several small solo exhibitions. These were curtailed by lockdown, and shortly afterwards a mild case of COVID triggered an autoimmune response, resulting in a diagnosis of Rheumatoid Arthritis at the age of 50. This led me to diversify my creative practice, expanding into social media design alongside my studio work.

My fine art employs a highly dextrous process I term heat-press collage, in which delicate inked films are collaged and fused under extreme heat. My digital and social media work provides an alternative creative outlet and additional income, allowing me to specialise in visually distinctive campaigns that prioritise genuine engagement — keeping the social in social media.

I work selectively with individuals, organisations, and businesses whose values align with my own, balancing creativity with long-term health considerations. As a fully involved freelancer at artShane, I am particularly passionate about advocating for fair pay and equitable treatment for artists.

My vision

My work is rooted in the paradox of living with an all-powerful imagination inside an unreliable body. As an artist with rheumatoid arthritis, I move through a world where pain, fatigue, and physical limitation are constant companions. My body resists me, but my mind does not. Creativity becomes both refuge and rebellion—proof that while my joints may stiffen, my inner world remains expansive, agile, and free.

Through collage, I fragment and rebuild reality, mirroring my own lived experience. Disparate images, textures, and symbols are layered into new narratives, allowing me to escape the confines of pain and reconstruct meaning on my own terms. My heat-press collage art gives me permission to work non-linearly, to pause, return, rearrange—honouring a body that cannot always perform consistently while celebrating a creativity that never stops adapting. These works are not about suffering; they are about transcendence. They assert that human creativity is profoundly powerful—capable of reshaping limitation into vision, and pain into possibility.

artShane

Human flaws matter. They are how we recognise one another. Imperfection in art is not a weakness but a form of evidence: proof that a person was present, deciding, failing, insisting. Flaws allow images to carry empathy. They make space for identification, for feeling seen, for not being alone.