Mixed media artist Kathryn Shagas transforms her year-round sensory experience of walking the Maine woods and coastline into non-objective paintings, drawings and freeform collages that draw energy from the sea of rhythmic vibrations that make up our living world. Within complex layers of monotype, paint, drawing and collage there is a sense of dreamscape musicality against areas of density and conflict, reflecting the power and uncertainty of nature to grow and thrive when the delicate balance of rhythms and cycles that we depend on for life is threatened.

 

With a collage of life experiences, Shagas was naturally drawn to mixed media. Originally from Montreal, she studied classical piano from age four through 20, then worked in New York and Baltimore as an offset printer, pacifist magazine editor and graphic designer. After a year of independent international bicycle travel that included China, Tibet, Bali and New Zealand, she built an award-winning graphic design firm in Maryland. Shagas is now a full-time artist living and working in Belfast on the Gulf of Maine, which has warmed faster than 99% of the global ocean.

 

 

Artist Statement

 

My mixed media paintings and drawings give form to the flow of seen and unseen rhythmic vibrations that create life. I walk on the shore and in the woods, immersing all my senses in the clouds, swaying trees, downhill streams and small animals scurrying about. Afterwards in the studio I let music flow through my body as I re-experience what Kandinsky called “stimmung,” the essential spirit of nature. I might start with a monotype print, which I then “mess up” with poured paint and drawing media, adding collage pieces cut from a second painting. Or it might be freeform, assembled from painted collage pieces, packing materials and dried acrylic bas relief remnants.  As disparate materials merge they change, echoing what physics tells us about nature: when two or more things vibrating at the different frequencies come close to each other they often start to vibrate together at the same frequency.

  

 CV

 b. Montreal, Quebec, Canada. 

Selected Exhibitions

 

Upcoming: 8/31–9/24, 2023
Fountain Street Gallery Annex, Boston, three-person exhibit

 

2022
On the Edge, University of New Hampshire Museum of Art

2021
{ONnow} Concurrence, Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA)
Deepening the Meaning: 18 Contemporary Abstract Expressionist Painters, d | a | c concepts, Miami, FL

2020
Reflections on Water, Maine Farmland Trust Gallery, Belfast, ME
Art Saves Humanity, SeeMe
Art 10 Baltimore, NIH/NIDA/Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Baltimore, MD

2019
Picture Whimsies, a Celebration of Art Through Music, collaborative exhibit / Concert, Baltimore, MD
Art 10 Baltimore, Max Gallery, Baltimore, MD
NIH/Johns Hopkins Bayview, Baltimore, MD
Art 10 Baltimore, Village Cafe, Baltimore, MD
Art 10 Baltimore, The Charles Theater, Baltimore, MD

2018
Y:Art, Baltimore, MD
Summer Stable Show, Maine Farmland Trust Gallery
Abstraction, River Arts, Damariscotta, ME

2017
Summer Stable Show, Maine Farmland Trust Gallery, Belfast, ME
Art for Land's Sake, Owings Mills, MD
Art 10 Baltimore, Hoffberger Gallery, Baltimore, MD
Castine Arts Plein Air Festival, honorable mention award

2016
Thrive, Jordan Faye Contemporary, Baltimore, MD
Bromo After 5, Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower, Baltimore, MD
Summer Stable Show, Maine Farmland Trust Gallery, Belfast, ME

2015
Jordan Faye Contemporary, Baltimore, MD
Hoofs, Roots & Wings, Maine Farmland Trust Gallery, Belfast, ME

2014
Two-person exhibit, Sascha's, Baltimore, MD
Thrive, Jordan Faye Contemporary, Baltimore, MD

Represented in Maryland by Bozzuto-Green Art. Works are included in numerous private and corporate collections.

Education

BFA , University of the Arts
Studies at the New York Studio School and Maryland Institute, College of Art