Arabella Proffer

Proffer is an artist, author, and co-founder of the indie label Elephant Stone Records. Her loose narrative themes revolve around a fascination with punk rock, aristocrats, fashion, the history of medicine, and biomorphic organisms. She delves into the her practice of oil painting tying together its relationships to anatomy, biology and emerging sciences.

Arabella Proffer’s artwork changed drastically one day in 2010 when she found herself creating surreal organic environments. Although she started from a place of abstraction, they became filled with strange hybrids of flowers, cells, and symbols that appeared like organisms from another planet. It was only later that Proffer found out she had cancer crawling through her body at an alarming rate. When Proffer’s doctor showed her the scans of the tumor, and close-ups of the cells, it looked almost identical to what she had been painting – tentacles and all. A new fascination with the macro universe and micro universe was born. This was a major departure for Proffer after 12 years of exhibiting as a Pop Surrealist portrait artist, with a mild obsession with European aristocracy, medical history, and the Old Masters.