Biography
Shaun MacDavid grew up in rural West Tennessee,
the second of six children whose father was an
English professor, and whose mother loved the
outdoors and gardening. Following graduation from
Middle Tennessee State University, Shaun moved
to Boston with her husband Andrew. There she
studied painting and drawing at the Art Institute
of Boston as well as the Museum School. During
a year spent in New York City, she studied anatomy
and painting at the Art Students League. She moved
to Buffalo in order to pursue her MFA degree at the
State University of New York at Buffalo. There she received a scholarship to teach figure drawing, and graduated in 1992.. Since then she has lived in
Boston, Cape Cod, and her home in West Cornwall,
Connecticut. She has focused her work on the
figure as well as still life. She has been influenced
by several modern masters, including Matisse, Kandinsky, Richard Diebenkorn, David Park, and
Romare Bearden; however, her style and sense of
color are uniquely her own. Her paintings have been exhibited at various galleries, including Chase Gallery
in Boston, Mark Gallery
in Cambridge, Rice/Polak Gallery in Provincetown, Hermine Merel Smith Fine
Art on Martha’s Vineyard. Currently her work is
presented by Stellers Gallery in Ponte Vedra Beach,
Florida, and the Scott Bundy Gallery in Kennebunkport, Maine. Her work is in many
private and corporate
collections across the country.
Artist Statement
I work with the figure and its environment, combining these images in a free,
imaginative way. The paintings make use of scenes from my life, dreams, and imagination. I create these paintings to evoke the
feelings we have about memories, the almost
dreamlike sense that comes from remembering
people and places over time. I work with small, often intimate scenes that I paint and then collage onto a
larger canvas. I connect the images with paint, to
create texture and movement within the painting. As I paint, I often scrape out areas to reveal parts of
images underneath. The final work contains the
richness of many layers, much as the layers of
memory, dreams, and imagination live in our minds.
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