Sophia Ainslie

Sophia Ainslie is an internationally exhibited visual artist whose work lives between abstraction and representation, woven from personal and cultural threads. She is interested in hybridity – how different visual languages can inhabit the same space. She has presented more than twenty solo exhibitions across the United States, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, including Woven (2025), Spill Without Splatter (2021), and Last Touch (2018) at Gallery NAGA, where she has held representation since 2014. Her paintings and large scale site specific murals appear in major public collections such as Emerson College, Harvard University, Boston City Hall, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and the Nirox Foundation.

In 2025, Ainslie published Bill Ainslie: South African Artist and Cultural Catalyst, a monograph honoring the influential painter and educator. The book launched in November at the Wits Art Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she participated in an invited public talk with internationally acclaimed artist William Kentridge.

Her work has been supported by awards from the Hendricks Art Fund, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Artist’s Resource Trust, and by residencies at NIROX (South Africa), Triangle (NY) ART/OMI (NY), Gasworks (UK), Thapong , and Thupelo in Southern Africa.

Ainslie is a Teaching Professor in the Department of Art and Design at Northeastern University, where she has been a faculty member since 2001. She teaches foundational and advanced courses in drawing, painting, color and composition, mixed media, and global art travel programs. She has held leadership roles including initiating and coordinating the Art and Design Senior Show website (established at the start of the pandemic), Coordinator of the Fundamentals Program, Coordinator of Part Time Faculty, mentor for faculty seeking promotion, and long standing member of the Senior Show Exhibition Committee. Her teaching has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Excellence in Teaching Award from Northeastern’s College of Arts, Media and Design.

She is committed to fostering inclusive creative communities and founded Drawing Together, a university wide drawing program she led for several years until the pandemic brought the initiative to a close. Her broader community engagement includes public lectures, critiques, and conversations at institutions such as Harvard University, Tufts University, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the University of Johannesburg.