Ali is from St Louis, where she currently lives with her husband and four children. Her signature pieces often depict girls wearing stripy socks over their hands, creating striking compositions using negative space effectively and evoking a playful, child-like quality. She uses a technique she describes as ‘modern fresco’, applying watercolours to plaster panels.

“My dependence on the visual world began when I lost much of my hearing through spinal meningitis at 2 years of age. This loss was a blessing in disguise as I learned to depend on body language and reading lips to communicate. So, from my youngest days, I became sensitive to the people around me and the unspoken language revealed through compositions of the human body.”

View more of Ali Cavanaugh’s work on her blog.