“Shaw’s work is filled with a personal vision of the world. She works with a sensitivity and poetry which is quite exceptional.
Roger de Grey- past president Royal Academy
The work is a reflection of my environment. The poetry of place with the artist as conduit, into this mix comes a lens of subconscious thought/reflections of inner and outer happenings and current states of being, both personal and of the wider world.
I work at the intersection of painting and sculpture, exploring the fragile poetics of Earth and our intertwined human spirit.
I work with material structures in a space between the imagined and actual, coming from both conscious and subconscious thought.
I contemplate how through Millenia humanity has used the energies and materials of Earth for our own ends: and how we increasingly take the planet we depend on for granted.
Within these expansive themes my work explores inner and outer scapes reflecting humanity’s impact on the natural world, imagined and actual histories, childhood, play, conflict and the stories that we weave through experience and time, subconsciously inherited and passed through generations.
I am concerned with how as humans we form incredible strong and sustaining bonds but in times of war are capable of such terrible aggressions and hostilities.
We have an instinctual and real need to create shelter for protection and survival but often leave those that are displaced and most in need without.
As I explore these themes, process takes precedence as I work, materially responding to the qualities of discarded, found materials and paint. I make intuitively, working with thoughts as they surface, thinking equally with hands and head as the ideas sharpen, respond and shift with the materials.
EDUCATION
MASS Turps Sculpture 2023/25
City & Guilds of London Art School BA Fine Art
Awarded First Class Honours.
SCHOLARSHIPS AND AWARDS
The Royal Academy Richard Ford Award
The Haworth Trust Scholarship
The Chadwyck-Healey Prize for Painting
The Campbell Jones Composition Prize
The Philip Connard Travel Scholarship
Exhibitions
Upcoming : SNAG, Safehouse 2, Copeland Rd, Peckham. 25th-27th May (with BLINK)
2025
HACK 8558 with Bow Arts SOHO CONNECTIONS 125 Shaftesbury Avenue London W1
ENTANGLEMENT Mass Interim Show 2025, Thames-side, Woolwich
FALLING FAINTLY, FAINTLY FALLING curated by Belinda Worsley, FinchGallery,
London Fields, Sidworth St E2
2024
NO FORMAT GALLERY - PAINTING OPEN Moulding lane, Deptford, SE14 6 BN
MATERIAL MATTERS Safehouses 1&2, 139 Copeland Rd, Peckham SE15 3SN
Newhaven Project Space PAPERWORK Installation Sussex
Newhaven Open, Sussex
WOOLWICH OPEN Thames-side Gallery London
LANDSLIDE Mass 2024 Thames-side Gallery
Roseproject24, curated by Belinda Worsley, Sidwoth Street London E8,
then Manchester Milan Paris New York
2023 AKA Contemporary, Cambridge (Winter show)
2023 AKA Contemporary, Cambridge (Summer show)
2023 Art Matters 1, The Art Pavilion, Mile End Park E1
2014 Bayard Gallery, Cambridge (summer show)
2012 Anstey Bury (solo show)
2010 Air Gallery, Dover Street, London W1 (solo show)
2009 Jodie Eastwood Fine Art (summer show)
2008 Cork Street Gallery, London W1 (solo show)
1996 Christopher Hull Gallery, London
Pump House Gallery, London (solo show)
Flying Colours Gallery, London
Battersea Art Fair, London
1995 Christopher Hull Gallery, London
Battersea Contemporary Art Fair, London
1994 Christopher Hull Gallery, London
The Pump House Gallery, London (solo show)
Hart Gallery, Upper Street, London
Battersea Contemporary Art Fair, London
1993 Sweetwaters Gallery, London
Gallery Kohler, London
The 20th Century British Art Fair, Royal College of Art,
Cadogan Contemporary, London
Northcote Gallery, London
Sotheby’s, London
1992 Cadogan Contemporary , London (Solo Show)
United Nations Building, Geneva (Exhibition of British painters to mark the presidency of the EU)
Bedales Gallery, Petersfield, Hampshire
401 1/2 Studios
1991 The Lamont Gallery, London E2. (Three woman Show)
The Talent Store Gallery, London SW1 (solo show)
1990 The Discerning Eye Exhibition,(invited by Sir Roger de Grey, President Royal Academy)
PUBLIC COMMISSIONS
1993 Triptych Genesis for Milton Keynes City Church
SOME SELECTED COLLECTIONS
The Royal Academy (Richard Ford Scholarship)
A.S. Byatt
Brinsley Ford
De Beers Contemporary Art Collection
HRH The King
Trevor Nunn
TEACHING
2012-2023 Head of Art, St Johns College School, Cambridge
2025 Visiting artist Melbourne School, Cambridgeshire
Visiting Artist St Peter’s School, Orwell, Cambridgeshire
2023-2024 Visiting artist, Bassingbourn School, Cambridgeshire
2020-2022 Visiting artist, St Luke’s School Cambridge
1991-1992 Visiting lecturer, University of Reading
Quote continued from above “...Shaw follows a heightened sense of awareness between observed and imagined scapes and poetic expression, factual representation dissolving in and out of shape, light and pattern. ”
Sir Roger de Grey