About Fay Ballard

Fay’s studio practice is centred on drawing, underpinned by an interest in psychoanalysis. She believes that drawing is both a conscious and unconscious act and is interested in psychological ideas about the creative process.

Since 2019, she has been working on a series of concentric circle drawings that began after a trip to Iran to see the early archaeological mud and brick settlements, the ancient brick caravanserai and the mosques with their domes of paradise. Fay also spent a week in Morocco on an intensive course learning to draw Islamic patterns in Fez. Her visit to Peter Zumthor’s brick Kolumba Museum in Cologne, a building emotionally in tune with its historic site, made a lasting impression.

Using a systematic, repetitive method and a set of rules, these circle drawings are constructed slowly of repeated concentric bands of graphite in its many tones or with watercolour of varying translucency and opaqueness. When complete, each circle reveals subtle shifts and imperfections, thereby bringing attention to the drawing’s handmade nature.

In 2021, the circle drawings were shown at Handel Street Projects London in a solo show entitled ‘In Circles’ curated by Fedja Klikovac, with an accompanying book designed by William Hall containing an essay by Dr Gilda Williams. Handel Street Projects also included Fay’s work in the Gallery’s Summer show of 2023.

In 2023 and 2022, Fay took part in a collaborative drawing project initiated and led by the artist Giulia Ricci. She was one of 16 artists invited to write about their creative process for the publication ‘Lines of Empathy’. Giulia Ricci presented her project at a research seminar at The Drawing Room in 2022. The project became a travelling exhibition that began at the Patrick Heide Contemporary Art Gallery in London in 2022 and travelled to Close Ltd Gallery in Somerset in 2023.

Fay’s previous drawings created from 2010 to 2018 explored memories of her childhood growing up after her mother died in 1964 and her father in 2009. They have been shown in several solo shows in London and the UK.

These autobiographical works were also shown alongside photographs by Judy Goldhill in the exhibition ‘Breathe’ at the Freud Museum (2018) taking the theme of art as reparation. The exhibition was curated by Dr Caroline Garland, psychoanalyst, accompanied by an audience engagement programme and a catalogue with essays by Professor David Alan Mellor and Dr Garland.

Fay and Judy developed their collaboration in ‘Travelling Companions’ at the University of Cambridge (2020) in an exhibition which explored the notion of personal belongings being companions to our journey through life, curated by Dr Ro Spankie, Assistant Dean of Architecture at University of Westminster. A number of contributors were invited to write about their personal travelling companions including Annie Lennox, Iain Sinclair and Rabbi the Baroness Julia Neuberger.

A further exhibition ‘Mending the Pysche’ curated by Carly Robinson at the Peltz Gallery Birkbeck University of London took place in summer 2022. The Peltz exhibition studied the reparative creative act further, with funding from the Wellcome Trust. All exhibitions were accompanied by a lively events programme with invited speakers including Marina Warner, Julian Barnes, Julia Samuel and Ron Britton.

In 2022, Fay presented a paper on her drawings of her childhood home at ‘Drawing Conversations 4: Engaging with sites of history and narrative’, convened by the University of Huddersfield. Her work will be featured in an accompanying publication ‘The Drawing As Placemaking’ co-edited by Professor Jill Journeax and Dr Simon Woolham published by Bloomsbury in 2025. It will also feature in ‘The Artist and Home: studios, practices and identities, co-edited by Professor Jill Journeax and Dr Imogen Racz, published by Bloomsbury.

The rigor of Fay’s recent circles has similarities with the precise botanical watercolour works she made for The Prince’s Foundation in 2006, painting plants at Highgrove, and more recently during a field trip and residency in Transylvania in 2016 documenting rare plants grown on the low meadows in two Saxon conservation areas. The Transylvania paintings were shown at National Gallery of Art, Romania, and the Romanian Cultural Institute, London. The Highgrove paintings were exhibited at the Garden Museum London as well as the Garrison Chapel, a new arts space created and curated by the Prince’s Foundation in 2023 and 2021. They also travelled to New York and Los Angeles. Fay’s paintings feature in two publications about the Highgrove Florilegium and two volumes on Transylvania.

Fay was a visiting artist at Hammersmith Hospital in 2017 and 2018 making art with patients at their bedsides and a solo show of her work was held at Charing Cross Hospital. She now sits on the Arts Committee for Imperial Health Charity (NHS) that runs arts activities and holds exhibitions at St Mary’s, Hammersmith and Charing Cross Hospitals.

In 2021, Fay and three other artists founded Dust Architects, an online platform of art discussions, with guest curators, artists, writers and academics. In 2016, she and Nick Kaplony founded a peer group of 10 artists that meets monthly to discuss work.

Fay has spoken at conferences and seminars at the Freud Museum, British Library, King’s College London, Birkbeck University of London, University of Cambridge, Leicester, Leeds, Huddersfield and Anglia Ruskin Universities. She has taught and spoken at the RCA, Camberwell, Wimbledon and Chelsea Art Schools. In addition, she runs art workshops most recently at the Royal Academy of Arts and Freud Museum.

Her work is held by HM King Charles III, the late HM The Queen, The Prince’s Foundation, Murray Edwards College University of Cambridge, Imperial Health Charity (NHS), Royal Society of Physicians, Royal Watercolour Society, Dr Shirley Sherwood Collection of Botanical Art and Winsor & Newton as well as many private collections.

Fay studied History of Art at University of Sussex, and MA Fine Art at Central Saint Martin’s Art School. She was a trustee of Camden Arts Centre and of the Victoria Miro Education Trust and an Elected member of the Royal Watercolour Society.

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