Erin Shaw presents her portfolio of narrative images. Enjoy, and find out more about this fascinating artist by visiting her website.
I was born and raised on a farm in Southeastern Oklahoma. My connection to place and people and the stories that each contain have always been primary to my motivation as an artist.
For as long as I can remember, I have always had a profound love and respect for people and the stories they collect as their own. I owe this love and respect, in part, to my American Indian heritage (Chickasaw-Choctaw).
My work as an artist rests in this simple assertion: We are collectors of stories and the stories we collect shape the people we are. In narrative style, I create paintings engaged in story: both its function and its telling. I see my role in this process as mediator and disrupter: standing between two opposing things, separating them, placing boundaries in new and unusual places and joining them once again. I work in this manner that I might see things in a new way.
My undergraduate degree was in studio art, but I had never picked up a paintbrush until my son, Samuel was born. In the early and very introspective moments of motherhood I had a moment of clarity, realizing that the best thing I could do for this young life was to give him an example of a fully alive mother.
With that clarity, came the challenge to begin making art and painting was where I landed. I never painted before my child came along, but I haven’t stopped since.
Samuel, now 6, and I regularly collaborate on pieces. You can see evidence of his hand in much of my paintings, whether it is a faint dinosaur drawing of his that has been reproduced on the canvas or actual drawings on chalkboard paint within the paintings. Samuel represents all the things I want to be as an artist, deliberate, creative, intuitive and confident.
I have just completed my MFA in painting from the University of Oklahoma and plan to continue painting and showing my work.
Such talent!!! Great work !
I enjoyed the content behind the art work.