SARAH SHAW - From The Depths ll (SOLD)

Artist Statement

I’m interested in the space between intention and the actual process of making paintings which I find tend to have their own agenda sometimes and take me on a journey which I hadn’t initially envisaged.

The spaces between the figurative, the suggestive, the expressive and the abstract in particular fascinate me, the suggestion, but lack of absolute definition, and the space left for the viewer to make their own interpretation seems to satisfy my sense of aesthetic and evoke the emotions of incompleteness and wanting that can riddle this over compromised world.

My work of late, perhaps not surprisingly, has become increasingly political (at least in initial intention) and these four very recent paintings in particular were inspired by the famous print, ‘From the depths’ 1905 by the declared socialist William Balfour Ker, whose most dynamic work depicts issues of class struggle and poverty.

I tend to see my work as a kind of controlled chaos and though the parameters of the dynamic of Balfour Ker’s print were observed and responded to, I allowed the process of painting to reveal the kinds of characters that were populating and being constricted in my interpretations of the print.

As always the work, regardless of initial intention, tends to hold a mirror up to its maker and speak analogically of not only societal or political struggles but also of a sense of our earthly bound physicality and our battles of a more spiritual, psychological and emotional nature.

Artist Name: Sarah Shaw
Year: 2019
Height: 120cm
Width: 61cm
Art category: Painting
Art medium: Oil on calico on board
Unframed