"Carpet Maquette"
Shawn Shepherd, "Carpet Maquette," 2005, recycled souvenir pendants, 13.6" x 7".
SHAWN SHEPHERD, International
Martin Batchelor Gallery, Victoria
Jan 7 - Feb 2, 2006
By Christin Geall
Victoria artist Shawn Shepherd sensed his work was taking a new direction last year when he exhibited a series of bold oils depicting abstract forms. The paintings had developed from Shepherd’s interest in information and combined arresting colours with letter fragments and fonts derived from corporate mass media. InInternational, a series of works in mixed media, Shepherd is still playing with the iconography of language, using parts of letters and characters from English, Japanese, Thai, Korean, Chinese and Aramaic. In some of these new works, the font samples are composed in a translucent motif and challenge the solidity of colour found in his earlier work. In others, Shepherd uses graphic information in collage. But it is still his sense of colour that has helped to establish Shepherd as a formidable young artist in Western Canada. “It’s the attraction to colour that got me started painting,” he says. “But when I work towards a show now, I am not trying to show my skill. It’s about working out an idea.”
Represented by: Polychrome Fine Arts, Victoria; The Petley Jones Gallery, Vancouver; Jonathon Bancroft Snell, London, ON.