Elaine Speirs was born in Johannesburg and moved to Paisley as a child. Her experiences between these two places inform her exploration of fragility, contradiction and reinvention, particularly the contrast between the richness of female identity and the depersonalised representation of women in the public sphere. Drawing on imagery from eighteenth-century portraiture to contemporary photography and film, she captures fleeting moments of humanity through dynamic wiping and layering techniques. Speirs trained at Edinburgh College of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art and has exhibited widely, including at the RSA, SSA, VSA and Mall Galleries. Her work has been selected for the BP Portrait Award and shortlisted for several major painting prizes.