Growing up on a farm on the outskirts of Guildford, Pie had a childhood spent playing outdoors and with access to the basic materials necessary for crafting and creating art.
Whilst in secondary school, she took over a small shed at her parents’ house and used it as a place to experiment with materials including spray paint, house paint and plaster. This became Pie Herring’s first taste of having a studio space, a personal place to escape and explore her creative interests.
Pie was awarded an art scholarship and it was at that point that she truly began to use her creativity as a means of self-expression and a way to make sense of the world around her.
The artist later went on to graduate from Edinburgh College of Art in 2018 with a First-Class Honours degree in painting.
Pie’s work has also been exhibited in numerous exhibitions including the ‘Young London Painters’ 2018 group show; and the Royal Scottish Academy’s New Contemporaries Exhibition in 2019, where she was awarded the Carnegie scholarship.
Most recently, Pie's work has been exhibited at the High Line Nine Gallery in New York as part of a group show entitled The Art of Resilience and in a self-initiated solo show called Fortitude.
Pie has also received several awards throughout her creative career and been featured in multiple publications in a variety of media.
This London-based artist now has a studio in North Acton, West London; which is situated in a complex used by a diverse group of creatives, which makes for an ever-changing hub of inspiration and creativity.
Pie Herring was invited to Kenya by an organisation called Lewa; a conservation and wildlife park in the Northern region of the country which relies heavily on the income generated from tourism.
Pie spent 6 months in Northern Kenya, documenting the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and lack of tourism on the local communities; creating her largest body of work to date in the process, culminating in two exhibitions to showcase the artworks.
The artist got to work with little in the way of a studio, using found objects as tools in place of her usual paintbrushes and palette knives; this helped her to come to the realisation of how much an environment can impact the direction of her work.
During the six months she spent in Kenya, Pie got to know members of the Maasai tribe; meeting them several times prior to photographing them for her work; this gave her the much-needed access to the stories and lives of the families she incorporated into her work.
Pie Herring is an artist that is continually exploring and experimenting with her artwork, moving more towards a deconstructed and abstracted style of painting and capturing the everyday lives of people.
