artist biography

Jules Bishop is an Oxfordshire-based artist and researcher whose practice explores the intersections of art, science, and ecology. Working with natural inks and pigments sourced from her local environment, she transforms landscapes into living colour, tracing the ways nature’s palette shifts with the seasons.

Her research began with hedgerows as part of the Green Plan Hedgerow Survey Team, a joint initiative between the Watlington Climate Action Group and the Watlington Environment Group. She later collaborated with the University of Oxford’s Science Together project, developing a community programme on hedgerow inks and pigments and experimenting with their application in CO₂-absorbing, VOC-free paints. Her most recent project is at the Broad Arboretum, where she is cataloguing the colours of all 49 British native trees—both the seasonal hues of their leaves and the inks they yield—while monitoring chlorophyll levels to study colour transformation across the year. To capture the spirit of the arboretum, she created a weave using wood pulp paper dyed with the summer colours of every species, and she is participating in the group exhibition, *Arboretum*, at The Earth Trust, Little Wittenham in October 2025.

Across drawing, print, sculpture, video, and performance, Jules works with the material life of colour as both process and metaphor. She has exhibited nationally, including in the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize Exhibition 2021 in London (touring to Drawing Projects, Wiltshire, and The Cooper Gallery, Dundee), and has contributed to events at the University of Oxford Botanic Garden and the Living Knowledge Conference 2022 in Groningen, Netherlands. Jules collaborates with Reloved Revolution in Oxford and is one of their featured artists, with her drawings being used to create regenerative furniture. She is a member of the Plants & Colour Study Group (UK) and Pigments Revealed International (US), where she was invited speaker of the month in January 2024.

Her interdisciplinary and environmentally engaged practice invites reflection on the delicate connections between people, place, and ecology, and how acts of observation and making can deepen our understanding of, and engagement with, the natural world.