Sheila Girling (1924-2015) was a British abstract artist who worked across collage, painting and clay. She was an early adopter of acrylic mediums and brought radical new approaches to colour, texture and surface to British painting.

Girling trained at Birmingham School of Art (1941-45) and The Royal Academy Schools (1947-50). Her technical expertise was widely respected and developed during her years living in Bennington, Vermont, where she made close relationships with the Colour Field painters. In 1965 Girling returned to England to be a mother and wife, two experiences that profoundly shaped her practice and her subsequent return to painting in 1973.

In 1982 Girling established Triangle Art Network with her husband, curator Terry Fenton and philanthropist Robert Loder to connect abstract painters and sculptors across the world.

As her career progressed, she developed a collage painting technique that brought new painterly spaces and structures to her lifelong study of colour, field and form.

From the 1970s until 2015 Girling worked from her studio in Camden Town, London. In 2006 Sheila Girling Retrospective opened at Insitut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM, Valencia) and in 2019 her work was collected by The Yale Centre for British Art (New Haven).