Sophia Ainslie is a South African American painter whose international career began through a series of sponsored workshops and residencies in the UK and U.S. These opportunities, including support from the Hamlyn Foundation and a year-long residency in San Francisco, opened new directions in her work and ultimately led her to Boston. With support from Henny Kirshon and the Tufts Art History Department, she earned her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University, followed by the Anne and Graham Gund Award to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

Her work lives between abstraction and representation, woven from personal and cultural threads. She is interested in hybridity - how different visual languages can inhabit the same space. There is friction, but also connection. The paintings become a weaving of self and story, an attempt to make sense through making form, the experience of being shaped by multiple places and the ongoing search for coherence in layered identities.

She is the recipient of the Inaugural Hendricks Art Fund, Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Painting, Artist’s Resource Trust Grant, The African Arts Trust and others. Ainslie attended residencies at NIROX (South Africa), Triangle and ART/OMI (New York), Gasworks (London), Thapong (Botswana), and Thupelo (Johannesburg and Cape Town). She is a Teaching Professor at Northeastern University.