“The only time I've had a religious experience is when I'm in the studio."
For American artist Ferrari Sheppard, painting is “100% spiritual”. The studio is his refuge and when he paints it often feels like “some greater energy is creating the work”. Growing up in Chicago in the 1990s, Ferrari was a self-confessed “art geek”. When it came to college, he gained a place at the prestigious Fine Art Institute of Chicago. However, the overly-conceptual BA programme ended up pushing Ferrari away from painting, and after he graduated in 2004, he started his career as a writer, photographer and music producer. In 2016, Ferrari returned to his “true purpose” in visual art, an...
Bio
Ferrari Sheppard was born in 1983 in Chicago, and now lives and works in Los Angeles.
Education
The artist graduated from the Fine Art Institute of Chicago in 2004, where he was awarded both the Merit Award and Presidential Scholarship.
Career
Guest lectures delivered at Harvard University, Concordia University and the University of Minnesota - amongst other prominent institutions.
Ahead of the first launch in our new Inner Visions series, we caught up with the project’s curator Larry Ossei-Mensah on Clubhouse in a conversation hosted by Avant Arte co-founder Christian Luiten.
In his first collaboration with Avant Arte, critic and curator Larry Ossei-Mensah introduces three artists, Grace Lynne Haynes, Ferrari Sheppard and Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe