Fay Ballard’s art practice is centred on drawing. She believes drawing is a conscious and unconscious act where internal and external worlds meet, and is interested in psychological ideas about the artist’s process.

Her early work documented flora: Royal College of Physicians’ medicinal garden as well as Highgrove and Transylvanian meadows for The Prince’s Foundation. After her father’s death in 2009, she drew the family home as a site to explore her childhood. A series of circle drawings was inspired by visiting Iran. In 2024, she took an artist residency with Pier Arts Centre in Orkney to study Neolithic burial sites, followed by a trip to Japan that inspired drawings made with sumi ink about the afterlife.

Her work has been shown widely including: Freud Museum, Garden Museum, Royal College of Physicians, Charing Cross Hospital, White Conduit Projects, Patrick Heide Gallery, Handel Street Projects, Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Birkbeck University of London, Centre for Recent Drawing, University of Cambridge, & Model Gallery Leeds, Close Ltd Somerset, National Gallery Romania, New York College Art & Design, Huntington Library LA, Nijo-jo Castle Kyoto, S.Togo Memorial Sompo Museum of Art and Marucube Gallery Tokyo.

Fay was visiting artist at Hammersmith Hospital in 2017 and 2018, and sits on Imperial Health (NHS) Arts Advisory Committee. Her work is held by the late Queen Elizabeth II, King Charles III, The Prince’s Foundation, Women’s Art Collection University of Cambridge, Royal College of Physicians, Royal Watercolour Society and Imperial Health (NHS).

Fay’s drawings about her home have been published recently in ‘Drawing as Placemaking: Environment, History and Identity’ edited by Jill Journeaux and Simon Woolham (Bloomsbury 2025).

Fay read History of Art at University of Sussex, worked in museums and galleries for 20 years before taking an MA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martin’s London.