Biography and Artist Statement

Shelagh Howard is a photo-based visual artist and member of the 2SLGBTQI+ community based in Halifax, Mi’kma’ki, Canada.  Her practice examines the layered terrain of memory, identity, and embodied experience. Through long exposures and the human figure, she explores the construction of selfhood—interrogating themes of gender, generational trauma, intimacy, and isolation.

With an unflinching gaze, she peers beneath the slick surfaces of constructed identity to reveal the complexities beneath. Her images thread motion and stillness, capturing the ephemeral shadows of the self and offering a fleeting glimpse of what lingers behind our carefully constructed facades.

Each image asks the viewer to see its subject captured outside of time, and to consider what it means to belong to and in a body.

Shelagh studied psychology at The University of Toronto and photography at Ryerson University, and has created and exhibited works in Canada, the US and Europe. Her portraits have been published in Songlines Magazine UK, Opera Canada, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, The Toronto Star, VICE magazine, on billboards in Times Square, NYC and Dundas Square, Toronto. Her personal work received an honourable mention at the 14th and 26th Annual Julia Margaret Cameron Awards in Barcelona, Spain, and the 2021 Artist Award from the Cornell Henry Art Gallery in San Diego, and was a Top 200 Finalist in PhotoLucida Critical Mass in 2025.