Arabella Ross Hampshire, United Kingdom

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Arabella Ross is an artist whose vibrant paintings and collages blend colour, emotion, and storytelling.  Inspired by nature and guided by instinct, her work is spontaneous and expressive.  Beneath bold colours, Ross explores deeper emotional themes of grief, loss, and transformation. Through symbolic and subconscious imagery, she creates a universal visual language as shared human experience.

My path comes from a genetic imprint of being an artist, of being brought up in a bohemian environment and of having a father and a mother who were both creative.  Through the legacy of my father’s creative spirit, his nurturing of mine and my sister’s art (he kept everything we ever made), over the years I have come to realise how this has deepened my practice.  I value my father’s achivements- his determination,   passion and commitment.  My father is no longer alive - he is gone, but he lives on in my soul as does my mother, both in  uniquely different ways.    

I want to be true to myself and to py homage to my  parents for whom I feel a deep well of gratitude for having brought me into this word. I was born on November 18th 1959.    

My collages represent a body of work that began in 2020. I had a need to make marks, to paint, glue fragments, to create a wold of images that expresed a sense of loss, joy, grief and freedom of expression.  The collages explore memories and experiences of living in London during the 1970’s & 1980’s.  Letters and diaries from  my mother and father’s correspondence which I found in my father’s belongings after he passed away in 2019 have emerged in my recent collaged work.  The old Tube maps, the pale blue airmail letters from Cyprus to Sussex, the torn fragments of love letters, pressed flowers, photographs and family ephemera…  

Through the process of ‘excavation’ within my art, having access to my father’s history, his creative life – hundreds of photographs, 35mm films made in the 1970’s, writings and documentary research - I have been able to telescope in on different eras, seeking to make sense of history and within this process deeply rooting myself in the present.  I have used scissors to cut up and piece back together the divorce and separation of my parents in the mid 1960’s - the time in which I began to draw and paint.   The artist has completed a Master’s degree in Fine Art at Chelsea college of Art and a BA Hons fine art (Wolverhampton Polytechnic.)  In July 2025 Ross will graduate from three years at Turps Banana Art school’s correspondence course.  In 2024 the artist exhibited at the Venice Biennale at the Palazzo Pisani-Revedin.  In 2025, Ross’s work has been shown at ‘Europe Art Now’ Art Gotham (New York) and Art Capital, Le Grand Palais (Paris).  Her work is held in private collections in London, UK, Europe, North America, and Australia.