Gerald Shepherd is a multidisciplinary artist who works in many mediums including painting, sculpture, photography, and digital art. He coined the terms "Ionist Art" and "Meditative Process Art" to describe his innovative sequential and developmental approaches to image making that often employ mathematics and science. In the late 20th century, Shepherd began a series of landscape and portrait paintings that combine observation with his sequential techniques to present layered ideas about the subject. He has also organized exhibitions focusing on animal welfare and wildlife conservation.

1. Gerald Shepherd F.F.P.S.
Gerald Shepherd is a painter, graphic artist, sculptor, digital/multimedia artist, photographer, writer,
curator and arts administrator. He has also been involved with science art, performance art,
conceptual art, installations and environments (as well as peripheral creative pursuits such as garden
design).
He won awards while still at school and also had his first theatre piece performed at this time.
However he is largely self taught and right from the outset of his career in the early Seventies has
employed extremely novel approaches to picture making; often using mathematics or scientific
models to process image sequences across an extended picture plane. He subsequently explored the
use of musical formats like sonata and theme and variation forms to sequentially develop images
and ideas as well combining visual art with his theatrical and literary interests to create new forms
of narrative painting. Gerald Shepherd coined the term Ionist Art in 1976 to cover this work and
then began to use the more descriptive term of Meditative Process Art in the early Eighties. He has
continued to experiment with evolving and elaborative structures to the present day.
At the end of the last Century the artist began an extended series of landscape and portrait paintings
which combine observation with the sequential and developmental formats of his earlier pieces.
These pictures are holistic and multi layered portrayals of people and the natural world using
symbols, signs and abstracted figurative images to present a broad spectrum of ideas and
information associated with the subject matter. He also produces entirely conventional paintings
and drawings, initially to commission but now only for relaxation.
Gerald Shepherd's early work in the Seventies was extremely experimental using a wide range of
materials not normally associated with art making. He then worked in pencil and acrylic medium
for some time before working almost exclusively in oils, acrylic and related media. At the
beginning of this decade he resumed his childhood passion for photography and also began to
experiment extensively with digital art and multimedia. This work is being presented under his full
name of Gerald E. W. Shepherd - some of the subject matter being highly personal – consequently
he currently has two almost independent artistic careers.
Gerald Shepherd founded the pioneering Ionist Art Group in 1987 for anyone who shared his
multidisciplinary interests. The large membership came from all the sciences and right across the
arts. He edited an art-science fusion newsletter entitled “The Ion Exchange” and arranged regular
meetings for artists and scientists to exchange ideas and explore collaborative projects throughout
the late Eighties and early Nineties. The artist then moved on to organising exhibitions and art
events to campaign on animal welfare and wildlife conservation issues; these activities being the
main focus of his curatorial interests for the remainder of the decade. Now married with many
other commitments the artist still organises regular exhibitions of modern and experimental art.
Instinctively drawn to the principles of Jainism since a child, Gerald Shepherd is passionately
interested in animal welfare and wildlife conservation and his political views lean heavily to the
left. His other interests include physics and chemistry, zoology and botany, archaeology, history,
geography, mythology, music and horticulture.
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