Dr Sheona Beaumont

Artist, writer and speaker; co-founder of Visual Theology

Dr Sheona Beaumont is an artist and writer working with photography, with extensive experience working and speaking at the intersection of the arts and theology.

Sheona’s creative practice explores biblical and theological ideas through photography, from the documenting of church communities to expressions of redemption in landscapes or portraiture. Since studying Fine Art and Visual Culture in Canterbury and Nottingham, she has had solo and group exhibitions across churches, cathedrals, and galleries nationally, including the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition. Her doctoral studies into the biblical spirituality of photography (University of Gloucestershire) were supported by Bible Society.

Sheona has held artist residencies in a variety of ecumenical settings: with Churches Together on Dartmoor (Devon), at Trinity College Bristol, and as Arts & Tourism Officer at St Cyriac’s Church (Wiltshire). Her most recent position as Bishop Otter Scholar (Diocese of Chichester, 2017-2020) combined her scholarly and creative practice through exhibitions, talks and publications with other writers and photographers, including Maciej Urbanek and Alys Tomlinson.

Sheona is a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London, and co-founder of Visual Theology, an independent organisation exploring the spiritual imagination in visual culture through specially themed public discussions and commissions.

Virtual lectures

Sheona is available to deliver her lectures online, via Zoom. Please ask about this option when making your booking.

Publications

The Bible in Photography (Bloomsbury, 2023)

John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Religious Imagination (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), co-edited volume with Madeleine Emerald Thiele

Transforming Christian Thought in the Visual Arts (Routledge, 2021), co-edited volume with Madeleine Emerald Thiele

‘Engaging with the Bible in Visual Culture: Hermeneutics between Word and Image, with Broomberg and Chanarin’s Holy Bible‘, Religion and the Arts (2019), pp.411-433.

‘Scaping Sin: Leviticus 15-18′, The Visual Commentary on Scripture, curating Tracey Emin, Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, and James Tissot (2019)

Eye See Trinity: Trinity College Artist-in-Residence 2014-15 (Blind Sight Press, 2016)

Bristol Through the Lens: An Exhibition and an Essay (Tangent Books, 2011)

The Imagetext: Relations Between the Visual and Verbal in Painting and Photography (Lambert Academic Publishing, 2011)

Lecture titles

Bespoke lecture about any of Sheona’s photographic projects
Enquire about a bespoke lecture on Sheona’s photographic projects, visit her website for project details.
Christianity’s Image Problem Today
Where is God in Western visual culture? Christianity’s European cultural heritage is rich, but the ideas, art and buildings of churches and their traditions are increasingly alien to a predominantly secular society; Jesus and the Bible in media and culture are often received as anachronisms. In this crisis of representation, Christians engaging with culture cannot rely solely on the legacy of verbal and intellectual communciation of the Gospel. Instead, where our culture is driven by affective image consumption, new strategies of the visual are needed.
Photography’s Theology of the Real: Seeing and Believing
Photography is the visual language of our time, and our media worlds of information and entertainment are unthinkable without it. But what kind of spirituality does photography have, if any? Are there ways to think theologically about the pictures we take with our phones, about sensationalised news imagery, about photography as art and science? With the photographic image seemingly everywhere, Sheona’s talk gives us tools for deeper theological understanding and appreciation of the medium’s realism.
The Big Picture: Biblical and Photographic Visions for our World
Environmental and ecological concerns are putting the planet and its future centre stage. Part exposition and part exhibition, this talk features extraordinary photographic images and draws them into conversation with Old and New Testament concepts of place, creation, and renewal. Sheona’s own work is included alongside others including photographs by Francis Frith, Thomas Merton, Susan Derges and the James Webb Space Telescope.