Artist Talk: Arabella Proffer

Arabella is a painter, author, and co-founder of the indie label Elephant Stone Records. Her loose narrative themes revolve around a fascination with punk rock, aristocrats, the history of medicine, and biomorphic organisms. She will discuss her journey from studying to be in the animation field and becoming a portrait painter, to when a cancer diagnosis changed her work dramatically with a focus on medical humanities, emerging sciences, and the practice and alchemy of intuitive oil painting.

Arabella attended Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA before receiving her BFA from California Institute of the Arts where she studied under artists such as Derek Boshier, Jim Shaw, and Susan Pitt. Her work is in over 60 private collections, and she participates in solo and group exhibitions throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Australia. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Plain Dealer, GOOD Magazine, Hi-Fructose, Juxtapoz, The Harvard Gazette, Scene Magazine, Snob, Hektoen International Medical Journal, Creative Minds in Medicine, and more. Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and bred in Southern California, she has lived and worked in Cleveland since 2004.