GEORGE SHAW
b. 1966, United KingdomGeorge Shaw’s paintings are nostalgic images of street- and landscapes. ‘I started to make these paintings out of a kind of mourning for the person I used to be...’ Born in Coventry in 1966, Shaw studied at he Royal College of London before moving to his current location of Ilfracombe, North Devon. Nominated for the Turner Prize in 2011, Shaw is an enamel painter, which he uses to paint vivid recollections of the council estate he grew up on. The nostalgia and childlike defiance embedded in these works constitute a personal memoir for the artist. His work has been described as ‘lift[ing] the paintings out of the realm of the purely representational, the ultra-realist, and [taking] it somewhere else, somewhere both old-fashioned and timeless, conservative yet contemporary.’
Shaw has been awarded numerous prizes for his paintings including the John Moore 21 Prize, 1999; the Messier-Dowty Travel Award, 1997; and the Paris Studio Award, 1997. He has exhibited in galleries across Europe and his work is held in the Arts Council Collection in the UK.
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