Alice Shirley
Alice Shirley is an artist, designer, illustrator and children’s author. She graduated from Byam Shaw School of Art, Central St. Martins in 2007 with a BA in Fine Art.
From 2007-2009 she worked on writing and illustrating her own edition of Aesop’s Fables, published in 2009 by Pavilion Children’s Books, Anova Books. In 2009 she started The Drawing Year at the Prince’s Drawing School, an intensive post-graduate drawing course. She continued for a second year at the Prince’s Drawing School and left in 2011.
She has worked closely with the Natural History Museum specimen collection, and designs for Hermès Paris. Her love of nature since childhood has been the inspiration of her art. After all, without nature what would we know of beauty? And without beauty, is life worth living at all?
In 2013-14 Alice collaborated with Synchronicity Earth, to produce artworks and bespoke hand-painted masks for the Biophilia Ball.
Alice created 8 gouache paintings representing a variety of ecosystems found on earth: Coastal Marine, Open Oceans, Deserts, Forests, Freshwater, Grasslands, Ice, and Mountains. These beautiful paintings were auctioned off at the ball but also provided the backdrop for our Biophilia Book.
Alice also created over 550 masks for the ball, each depicting a different species. The Natural History Museum truly came alive: frogs danced with fish, birds talked to mammals, and an orangutan gave an impassioned speech.
