ABOUT SHEEFALI

Sheefali-1

I am an Indian born British artist. I finished my Masters in Fine Arts from Chelsea College of Arts, London in December 2019 with distinction.

I have studied with Sam Adoquei, a Ghanian American artist at his Fine Arts Union Square Atelier in New York from 2011-2014. I have shown my work in Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles, Vienna, Ferrara and Miami.

Art to me as an artist is like science to scientist. It is a way of making observations about the world. It is a process of slicing the world apart and then reconstructing it — making connections new and some old but always telling a new story. Always hoping for a new insight — always a new way of looking at the same thing.

My works, a conscious effort to articulate a new secular iconography, are inspired by Richard P. Feynman’s science, philosophy and his two questions. He has inspired generations of scientists and philosophers and maybe even a musician or two. But it is as an artist I have been propelled along by his question: ‘Is no one inspired by our present picture of the Universe? This value of science remains unsung by singers, you are reduced to hearing not a song or poem, but an evening lecture about it. This is not yet a scientific age. What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?’.

With my “Pattern Seeker” and “Ignition Sequence” series of oil paintings, “Virtuteus Praemium - the reward of virtue” - a college campus wide installation, and “Sartorial Van”- an NFT collaboration with Saatchi Art’, I sought to celebrate an evidence based world view.

And my belief that for humanity to have a prosperous future it is critical to understand what we know, how we know what we know and how we got to where we are today and that it is this knowledge that will enable us to rise to the immense challenges that we are presented with as a species. 

Our ancestors were pattern-seeking hunter-gatherers before they become sedentary and started growing crops, whose ability to seek and find patterns in the world allowed them to live long enough to procreate and pass on what has been humanity’s unique characteristic – our curiosity. It is this unbearable yearning to know and an impossible to stop urge to explore - the attribute we call curiosity that has lead to the great flourishing of science and art over the last three hundred thousand years. We find evidence of this yearning within ourselves - and all over our planet showing up in cave paintings and carvings - we see momentary reflections of ourselves in toys and artefacts found in sites of ancient human habitations.