By Shawn Dulaney
Located in Surfside, FL
Shawn Dulaney
The Virtues III
Handmade paint on venetian plaster on paper,
signed and titled verso
22 x 30 in. (sheet), 28 1/4 x 36 1/4 in. (frame).
Shawn Dulaney’s paintings are layered constructions of color, spacious abstractions that read like cloud banks, flows of water, magnetic fields charged with monumental energy. Dulaney spent her childhood on a vast Colorado plateau looking west to the Rocky Mountains and has travelled widely, immersing herself in landscape. Her work captures the experience and feeling of place. Doug McClemont of ArtNews writes that Dulaney’s paintings “concern the earth, and the unyielding hand of nature”.
Her work has been described by William Zimmer of The New York Times as belonging to “a very strong tradition, that of 19 th -century Northern European Romanticism in which nature was seen as corresponding to human emotional states.” He says of her work, “Ms. Dulaney makes it clear that her inner life is very much a part of each painting, and this alone distinguishes it from most abstraction…Shawn Dulaney is deliberately out for grandeur, but she is also out for intimacy. Her paintings take advantage of their innate ambiguity and declare themselves to be very current in the thinking that lies behind them.” "The kind of painting to which Ms. Dulaney's work is most closely related, at least superficially, is the Mark Rothko branch of Abstract Expressionism, in which a sense of deep space is sought."
Dulaney makes handmade paints consisting of acrylic medium and powdered pigments allowing her to get a wide range of saturations and transparencies as they spread out on Venetian plaster and linen over panel. “Her surfaces”, as described by Dominick Lombardi-also of The New York Times, are “exquisitely painted and a pleasure to see.”
Dulaney continues to travel between New York, the American Southwest, and the United Kingdom, as well as having recently been awarded the Pink House Artist Residency on the Beara Peninsula in Ireland. Her paintings capture the ephemeral and evoke the Celtic notion of a “thin place”, a place of energy where the veil between this world and the eternal is thin. A working artist for over 4 decades, Dulaney is represented by Sears Peyton Gallery, Weber Fine Art, Carrie Haddad Gallery and Beth Urdang Gallery. Exhibited widely, her paintings can be found in extensive public and private collections including those of the Hunterdon Museum of Art in NJ, the Venetia Resort in China, J Crew in NYC, as well as in the private collections of author Annie Proulx, actor Steve Buscemi, talk-show host Conan O’Brien and musician Stuart Copeland. Her work has appeared in episodes of TV’s Enlightened, Portlandia and Sex & the City, and the films It’s Complicated (2009), Interview (2007) and John Wick 3 (2019). Her work has been reviewed in ArtNews and The New York Times, and has been featured in Parabola and New American Paintings. A contemporary, Post war American woman artist. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Select Group Exhibitions
2022 - Sears-Peyton Gallery, Playground, New York, NY
2022 - Weber Fine Arts, Summer Exhibition Renate Aller...
Category
21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Expressionist Plaster Paintings
MaterialsPlaster, Paint, Paper, Mixed Media
