"I create psychologically charged worlds in which scale, symbolism, sound and historical painting traditions are used to transform personal experience into collective myth." 

Úrsula Romero (Jessica Rosemary Shepherd, 1984) is an internationally recognised British painter whose emotionally charged and botanically symbolic works bring us closer to the mystical, the metaphysical and the sublime. 

Úrsula Romero: Between Memory and Myth

Úrsula Romero’s work occupies a distinctive territory between contemporary painting, symbolism, autobiography and psychological image-making. Working across painting, installation, sound and long-term research projects, Romero has developed a visual language in which flowers, plants, the human figure and fragments of personal history become vehicles for exploring themes of longing, grief, transformation, ageing, identity and collective memory.

Although botanical imagery has long been associated with her practice, to describe Romero as a botanical painter would be to misunderstand the nature of her work. In her paintings, flowers rarely function as botanical subjects in their own right. Instead, they operate as symbolic forms, carrying emotional, psychological and cultural meanings that extend far beyond the natural world. Leaves and flowers become a symbols through which personal and collective experience are examined. Her paintings are meditations on nature and the mysteries of us passing through space and time. She uses flowers and leaves as her muse to tell her own autobiography. She describes all of her works as self portraits.  

Romero’s work draws upon a lineage of artists concerned not simply with representation, but with the transformation of inner experience into image. Echoes of Goya’s psychological ambiguity and El Greco’s spiritual distortion can be felt throughout the work. Yet these influences are absorbed into a visual language that remains distinctly her own, one in which autobiography is continually transformed into allegory.

Central to Romero’s practice is an enduring interest in the relationship between what is seen and what remains concealed. Figures are partially obscured, forms extend beyond the boundaries of the image, and visual information is deliberately withheld. This recurring strategy creates works that resist complete resolution, inviting viewers to inhabit a space of uncertainty, memory and projection. The paintings do not seek to explain themselves fully; rather, they remain active in the imagination long after the encounter has ended.

The artist’s fascination with scale also plays a significant role within the work. Monumental leaves, oversized botanical forms and psychologically charged figures challenge conventional relationships between viewer and subject. Scale becomes more than a physical condition; it becomes an emotional and symbolic device through which vulnerability, power, longing and disorientation are explored.

Throughout her career, Romero has repeatedly expanded painting beyond its conventional boundaries. Early immersive installations incorporating light, sculpture and sound reveal concerns that continue to underpin the work today: atmosphere, psychological tension and the creation of environments capable of provoking profound emotional responses. Whether through a painting, a soundscape or a symbolic botanical form, her work consistently seeks to engage the viewer at a level that precedes rational interpretation.

Underlying Romero’s diverse projects is a remarkably coherent investigation into the nature of human experience. The blue flower becomes a symbol of longing and pursuit. A field of pansies painted during global lockdown becomes a meditation on thought, isolation and collective humanity. The female figure becomes a site upon which questions of ageing, grief, politics and identity are enacted. Across all of these works, personal experience is transformed into a broader symbolic language.

Romero’s practice ultimately inhabits a threshold between autobiography and mythology, memory and imagination, beauty and unease. Her works do not offer fixed narratives or singular meanings. Instead, they create spaces in which viewers are invited to confront their own memories, emotions and uncertainties. In doing so, they participate in a long tradition of artists who understand painting not merely as a means of depiction, but as a means of making visible those aspects of human experience that remain difficult to name.