Statement
Through both portraiture and abstraction, my work traces moments of blindness, assumption, and preconceived beliefs. When I get tempted to view life in black and white, I challenge the idea that we live in a stark and certain world. My artistic practice is born from the blurry, smeared, and confusing cross sections of living. Often painting with watercolor on paper, and oils on unstretched canvas, I allow the work to remain flexible. Loosely rendered portraits reflect not only their subjects, but what's obscured behind them - what's hidden over their shoulder. Figures feel present, but refuse to fully arrive, as if the work is searching to locate a personal, collective, and social ghost that resists comprehension. Spray painted sea and sky scapes provide pause, while still exploring rich places of unknowing. I incorporate fragile and unstable materials like pressed flowers, photographs, and newspaper clippings, which help to ground the work in time, like snapshots of history. These preservations act as odd companions to paintings, offering relation as a way to consider contradictions between societal and environmental conditioning. I'm captivated by, and endlessly exploring how this conditioning affects people on an individual level. My work mirrors difficult questioning, requiring tolerance and openness in moments when clarity would provide great relief. Catching quick glimpses of such fleeting clarity is possible when pausing to focus, and allowing oneself to see what has been unconsciously overlooked. These moments of distant witnessing find and pass me quickly, as if I'm riding a speeding train - able to focus my gaze for only a moment as I look out the window.
Bio
Shaw Osha is a multidisciplinary artist whose work considers how social and historical conditioning impacts individual lives. She investigates human relations, aloneness, difference, love, and suffering through painting. She often paints from photographic reference and stills from YouTube videos, using oils, watercolor, and spray paint, alongside materials such as preserved flowers, maps, and newspaper clippings. Osha was raised in New York, where she maintains a part-time studio practice at the Elisabeth Foundation. She attended Columbia University, graduating with a BS in 1985, and later receiving her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2009. She currently resides in Washington state, where she works as a visual arts professor at Evergreen State College. Osha has exhibited at New York Pocket Utopia, the Halbreen Gallery at Seattle University, Satellite UNC in Chapel Hill, Whatcom County Museum; Bellingham WA, and the Ali Center in Louisville KY. She has been an artist in residence at Virginia Center for Creative Art, VA (2019) Centrum, Port Townsend, WA (2021), and Greenwoods 58, Norfolk, CT (2022). Most recently her work has taken shape as a self published artist book. A physical, printed assemblage, documenting and commenting on the last decade of her journey as a professional artist.Contact
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