Abbie Schug

Abbie Schug is a visual artist whose research considers the post-digital translation of visual data across traditional and digital screen-based media. Influenced by her passion for traditional portraiture and photography, her practice investigates the anatomy of the digital image whilst examining the very essence of viewing. Abbie's primary concern is the visual representation of the human being and the translation of this data through mechanisms, media and the mind.​

Abbie Schug’s Training and Inspiration

Abbie is a graduate of the University of Northampton with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art: Painting and Drawing (2018) and an MA in Fine Art (2019). Schug applies her traditional training as an oil painter to create artefacts that counteract the velocity and flight of the digital era. In her ongoing body of work, Abbie generates painted images in a state of virtual flux. Her process begins by [re]photographing screens displaying photographic images with analogue and digital optical devices, allowing the data to "naturally mutate". During this "entropic decline", the visual data becomes suspended between states of being and non-being. Abbie then paints this suspension onto canvas. By translating images of the self beyond the point of being human, yet leaving apparent traces of having once been present, Abbie considers the anatomy, agency and quasi-being of visual data, the threshold between reality and simulation, and the relationship between artist and image.

Exhibitions, Awards and Collections

Nominated by MK Gallery for her portrait paintings, Abbie was on the shortlist for the CVAN Platform Graduate Award in 2018. She has featured work at Truman's Brewery, MK Gallery, NN Contemporary, and Coombe Gallery, and published research at the Without End 2019 Postgraduate Research Symposium. She will present further studies at the PhotographyDigitalPainting International Symposium in October 2021. Painted images by Abbie can be found in private collections across the UK and Australia.