David Shannon's "Arcrania" Exhibition
- Elizabeth Gracen
- 9 hours ago
- 7 min read
By Elizabeth Gracen:
For me, there is nothing like a new art exhibit vibrating with fresh birth into the world. To witness the end result of the sheer audacity of spirit necessary to bring such a thing to life and to get the chance to bask in the artist's unique expression can be an incredibly personal, almost sacred moment that suspends my quotidian anxiety just long enough to allow for a grateful sigh of relief in this weary world.
Such was my recent experience in South Pasadena at the SPARC Centre Gallery for the opening of David Shannon's newest fine-art show, Arcrania. After a long day of filming in downtown Los Angeles at the local "Hands Off" protest (a cathartic, exhilarating event that nonetheless left my energy tank empty), I was in need of fine-art nourishment and afraid that I would be too late to celebrate Arcrania's arrival. As luck would have it, I arrived for what I consider the perfect viewing experience. The crowd had thinned, thus allowing for optimum viewing of Arcrania's blast of joyful color and mystery. Ahhhhhh . . .
A Washington-state native and a graduate of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena with a fine-arts degree in illustration, you might recognize the artist's name as the award-winning children's book author and illustrator of such classics as the "No, David!" series, A Bad Case of Stripes, Duck on a Bike, and so many more, but my friend Dave is also an accomplished painter with expert skill and a vivid imagination that continues to blossom and grow with adept improvisation and curiosity. His last show at the gallery, Incognition, explored “the increasingly irrational nature of contemporary culture,” with Shannon's familiar use of bold line and color; but, lucky for us, his art continues to evolve and deepen as he confidently explores the ambiguities of life with paint, brush, and canvas.
Dave's latest work introduces us to the world of Arcrania—a whimsical display of paintings with a sorbet variety of colors to pick and choose from. The organic, tactile shapes beg identification yet defy categorization. Is it a flower, a still life, a rock formation? Or is that supposed to be a brain? A gummy bear? A tree? The titles may serve as clues but, knowing Dave, it could be a red herring. It really doesn't matter, because the unifying thread appears to be joy and mystery. It's great fun and great art.
I recently reached out to Dave to talk about the exhibit, his influences, and what the powerful paintings of Arcrania are all about.
Elizabeth Gracen: Dave, it was terrific to see your newest exhibit this past weekend. It must be so gratifying to see all of the series together on the walls like one big happy family. The Arcrania abstracts burst from the canvas. The colors and forms are so exciting—almost kinetic! Most artists don’t like to delve too deeply into the “why” of their work, but I’m curious about your inspirations and how Arcrania came to life.
David Shannon: Well, first of all—thanks for coming to the show and doing this interview. It was great to see you and all our friends! And, yeah, lotsa fun to see everything on the wall. My studio is pretty small, so that was the first time I saw them all together.
I’d done a few paintings of brains for a previous show at SPARC (Incognition). The shapes and folds and patterns were intriguing, so I started playing around with them in my sketchbook. I’ve always been interested in movement and ambiguity of forms, which they seemed particularly suited for. That was just the starting point for exploring how combinations of forms, along with different color schemes and textures, could express different ideas.
EG: In your artist statement, you talk about wanting the work to elicit a response from the viewer. When you create your art—this group of paintings, in particular—do you start with that intention, or does the work reveal itself as you progress? Did Arcrania spring forth from one idea, or did the abstraction and vivid color palette reveal itself to you once you put brush to canvas? Did the forms make themselves known, or was it a playful relationship where you were willing to improvise and riff on the ideas? I guess I’m asking, “Who was in charge?”
DS: You hear people talk about a dialog between the artist and the painting, and that really is what it’s like. Sometimes it’s more of an argument, lol. The paintings are the result of a combination of intent, improvisation, and discovery. Most of them start out as black and white drawings. I work out a lot of things there, but all the color decisions take place on the canvas—and I always try to let the piece tell me what it wants to be. I guess I’m in charge at the start, and then the picture gradually takes over and the conversation shifts to between the different parts of the painting.
EG: As I told you at the show opening, I found your decision to frame the forms in a soft-edged white border such a pleasing aesthetic that perfectly contains the work. It is easy to imagine a no-brainer (pun intended) way of hanging the pieces on the wall. How did you come to that framing-device decision? Why do you think it works so well?
DS: The color fields surrounding the images evolved over the first few paintings. I tried painting the forms across the entire surface of the canvas, but I didn’t like the way it looked cropped. I played around with a horizon line and a background, too. I liked the way that created negative space around the image and emphasized the sculptural qualities, but it looked too pictorial. Placing the image in a field of color worked much better. I liked how the flatness of it barely contained the exuberance and painterly quality of the forms. It gave them an iconic feel. I left a little rough-edged border around the whole thing to make the color field part of the painting instead of just a background. I liked the way it resembled a screen. The borders aren’t exactly white—they’re raw canvas with some wash on them, usually brown or black.
EG: I alluded to this in the previous question, but these shapes are wild and wacky. Some of them look like brains, intestines, fruit . . . all of them organic. Some of the pieces are truly humorous, and some of them pushed me away with their directness. From your artist’s statement:
"The shapes themselves reflect the dynamics of nature, thought, conversation, time, and life in general. They churn, roil, fold into each other, collide, merge, split off into dead ends, and encircle. They can appear beautiful, ominous, whimsical, grotesque, absurd, even somewhat obscene."
Do you feel that you’ve said what you want to say with this series?
DS: Not even! The shapes are sort of biological forms that are common to all kinds of things. They’re very versatile and conducive to conveying gesture and personality, and the way they interact with each other helps to give the paintings meaning. There’s also a typographic element that was an accident at first, but it’s intentional now. So, there’s all this interplay between the visceral and the intellectual—figuratively and literally—and that’s how I hope people respond to them. There’s a lot of room for interpretation of what’s going on.
EG: You have another recent series, Black Still Lifes. I’ve seen only one piece in person at a recent group show at the same gallery earlier this year, but it’s an arresting series. So very different than Arcrania—a more classic approach to still-life painting with hints of Cézanne and Émile Bernard (two of my favorite artists at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California). However, you’ve taken the subject matter and turned it toward the shadows. You’ve pared it down, restricted color. It feels like you are delving deep into the opposition and connection between darkness and light. There is something fishy going on in these paintings. It’s mysterious, psychological with a moodier point of view. Tell me a bit about the series and how it came to be.
DS: I guess they’re a response to the times we’re going through. They’re traditional still-life paintings, but very minimal, and the introduction of black objects tells the viewer that, like you mentioned, something is not quite right. The objects themselves are standard, classic still-life subject matter—flowers, fruit, bottles, a chair—that tend to symbolize life, culture, maybe even joy if they were rendered in full color. The blackness makes them both densely solid and an empty void. There’s a feeling of loss and memory. In some ways there’s still a lot of beauty in them, but they’re unsettling.
EG: I’m curious if you worked on the two series back-to-back or in tandem. You are quite prolific! Was one series a reaction to painting the other? Which came first: the black and white or the color?
DS: The Black Still Lifes came first. Now that I think about it, the Arcrania pieces probably were a reaction to them. I guess I got tired of their restrictiveness and wanted to play a little.
EG: Okay, last question (unless I want to do a follow-up): what’s next for Dave Shannon? What are you working on now? Where can people go to discover and purchase your amazing art?
DS: More Arcrania! There’s lots of things I still want to explore with these paintings. The show will be up through April 30 by appointment only (626-676-4195), with another public event on Saturday, April 26. If anyone’s interested in seeing more work or contacting me about a purchase, they can go to my website at davidshannonart.com or my Instagram @nodavid2018.
Elizabeth Gracen is the owner of Flapper Press & Flapper Films.
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