Ethel Shipton American, b. 1963

Ethel Shipton was born and raised in Laredo, Texas. She received a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin in 1989. Ethel worked for the Texas House of Representatives as a photographer for more than eight years. She lived and worked in Mexico City in 1990 and 1992, and then returned to Texas, settling down in San Antonio.

A strong conceptual base informs Ethel Shipton’s practice and encompasses a variety of expressions. Through painting, installation, photography, and text, Shipton spotlights instants of clarity that flit by in the comings and goings of daily life. Past works have centered on ideas of urban scenes, language, and attempts to process information. Time is an essential issue of her oeuvre. “Space and time, movement and place I see going hand and hand. These two elements continue to be groundwork for my artwork. We all continue to move between time and space on a moment-by-moment basis.” – Ethel Shipton. 

Shipton’s work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at venues including the Inaugural Exhibition of Ruby City, San Antonio, TX; Artpace, San Antonio, TX; McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX; McKinney Contemporary Art Center, Dallas, TX; Sala Diaz, San Antonio, TX; The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. Shipton was also a 2017 participant in the Berlin Residency Program, Blue Star Contemporary, in partnership with Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany. In 2023, Shipton’s hometown of Laredo, TX, gave her a solo exhibition, Ethel Shipton: Los Dos Laredos y Más, at Laredo Center for the Arts. Her recent group exhibitions include Regarding Ruscha, McNay Art, San Antonio, TX; Stitch in Time, Women and Their Work, Austin, TX; Piecework, Dallas Center for Contemporary Art, TX; Latinx Art: Transcending Borders, Octavia Art Gallery, Houston, TX and Analia Segal and Ethel Shipton: Feminizing forms, Finesilver Gallery, San Antonio, TX. Among the museums where her work is part of the permanent collection are El Museo del Bario, New York, NY; The McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX; Ruby City, San Antonio, TX; and San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX. 

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