Read Shaun’s full artist statement below. Click the links to access the exhibition price list or contact Shaun/ join mailing list.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Home is something we move away from, long for, inhabit and remake. I constantly return to the idea of home - not just as a physical place, but as a shifting psychological space. Shaped by personal and collective memory, materiality and sensual experience are central to my practice.
Following only a strong desire to bring to life what was in my head, I used to make with little considerations as to why. Early works, including large scale paintings of dogs and cats on bedding, years later revealed themselves as coded narratives of childhood trauma. Now conscious of this, my work doesn’t attempt to explain it. Instead, it makes space for what cannot be fully spoken, held within the familiar language of the body, flowers and domestic objects.
My hands sweeping across the tufts of chenille bedspreads, my fingers tracing the outlines of floral wallpaper - these comforting memories are woven into the materials I work with. Vintage bedspreads and wallpapers, decades-old upholstery fabrics purchased on clearance, cardboard and newspaper are my canvas. I’m drawn to materials that exist in a liminal space between the precious and the disposable. Working with these materials lets me speak to survival in a way that’s quiet but deliberate.
The surfaces I build are about contradiction. I take soft, familiar fabrics like chenille and heavily encrust them with paint, turning them into something hard and prickly. This transformation becomes both an act of self-protection and a gesture of control, allowing me to reframe vulnerability through tactile processes. What appears lush and inviting might instead reveal itself to be sharp and resistant.
Touch is an important undercurrent in my work, with a negotiation of permission built into many of my painted surfaces. People often want to touch, which is followed by a moment of hesitation - they either ask or simply touch. In that pause, a subtle boundary becomes visible, one that is either respected or crossed.
Ink drawing is a different kind of ritual, one of surrender. I work upright, letting gravity take hold as I draw with a dropper directly from the bottle. Ink runs down the wall onto my feet and the floor. It’s a physical process of letting go and then control. Life is messy, and so is this process. I repeat drawings, many are discarded, others are filed away. Some become resolved works on paper, others provide the composition for larger paintings, their components hidden and transformed. My drawing practice is layered and selectively revealed.
Through transformation, I find possibility. My work doesn’t offer simple narratives of healing or disclosure. It holds space for the messy, layered process of making meaning from experience. It embraces contradiction, it doesn’t reveal everything at once. Like memory, like home, it shifts.