SHAHN is a Canadian abstract painter based in Calgary, Alberta. The work draws on personal experience and historical memory, using image-making to examine how these forces persist and take form. Rather than resolving them, the work holds tension between what...
Read MoreSHAHN is a Canadian abstract painter based in Calgary, Alberta. The work draws on personal experience and historical memory, using image-making to examine how these forces persist and take form. Rather than resolving them, the work holds tension between what is inherited and what is lived.
The practice originated in early experiences in which drawing served as a private system of control and interpretation. Line and form were not descriptive tools but a means of reframing what could not be directly confronted. Over time, the practice expanded across painting, sculpture, photography, and design. Studying at Alberta University of the Arts situated the work within a broader critical and historical context, but did not resolve its underlying concerns.
A recent confrontation with mortality has altered the pace and structure of the work. Time is treated less as a backdrop and more as material. Compositions are built around instability, where presence and erosion exist simultaneously.
What remains is a practice shaped by accumulation rather than resolution, where personal history is neither illustrated nor explained, but embedded within the structure of the work itself.
