Amy’s motherhood work captures a world that has often been overlooked by artists, where women are strong and yet frequently vulnerable and ignored. She depicts the exhaustion, serenity, stresses and pleasures of being a mother, with images of women’s bodies which are not idealistic or heroic, but raw and truthful. Jacqueline Rose (Professor of Humanities at Birkbeck Institute) describes Amy’s work as “sensuous without a trace of coercive sentiment, embodied without burden. Shuckburgh’s delicate yet bold and vivid images of motherhood manage to evoke a portrait for our time that avoids the twin pitfalls of idealisation and punishment.” This series began as a way of processing and celebrating being a mother and the particular challenge of caring for a child with special needs. Amy’s work draws on decades of portrait-painting, both of children and adults, and her interest in expressive and instinctive mark-making.

Amy’s pastel portrait of the late Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter, completed from sittings in 2006, is permanently displayed at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London and was used on the Order of Service at Harold Pinter’s funeral. Amy has exhibited and sold her work widely since graduating in 2000. She studied at L'Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, the St Ives School in Cornwall, The Royal Drawing School and the Slade School of Fine Art, in London. She has a first in English Literature from Leeds University and a Masters Degree in Curating from Goldsmiths College, London. She is a published writer of fiction, poetry and journalism, and is an elected Associate Artist at Unison Colour. She teaches art to both adults and children, through creative workshops and retreats.