Shell Bankier Photographer

Shell Bankier grew up sailing around the world with her family, giving her a deep love for the ocean.

At age 16, Shell was paralysed in a horrific car accident that ended her father’s life and left her fighting for her own. Learning to walk again was a long and painstaking process, and she defied all her doctors’ prognoses, slowly rebuilding her life. Since then, although she has lived with severe chronic pain and the life-long repercussions from the accident, she has never let that define her and she found photography gave her a lifeline and a new purpose.

Focussing on surf photography early in her career, she was not averse to shooting huge Hawaiian surf or thirty foot Teahpo’o in Tahiti from a tiny boat, and was one of the few female photographers contributing to major surf magazines, being the first female surf photographer to have work published in ASL magazine this century. Her work has also appeared in numerous exhibitions here and in Sydney and she self-published her first photography book, BlueSphere, in 2012.

Now her work has simplified into abstract renditions of the energy that moves oceans. Shell’s photography focuses on sea and sky, with a quiet visual effortlessness that pays homage to nature’s unique architecture, creating images more akin to fine art than traditional surf photography. Her latest work is immersed with deep inky colours and tones, silvery whites and forms of flow…melding sea and sky together for statement art.

Shell is represented by Art Lovers Australia and lives on the Gold Coast with her awesome wife Taya and two amazing kids, Vallen and Aven, who inspire her everyday.

“My photography is what I can do to inspire others; my artworks are mirrors of the Universe, held up to you, showing you the reflection of that grand universal truth and beauty that lives in you,” she says.