George Shaw

George Shaw’s hyperrealist paintings draw on the landscapes and environments in which he grew up. Depicting suburban locales, faded parks and terraced streets, the artist empties his canvases of people; conspicuous through absence, Shaw nods to human presence through the inclusion of trampled leaves, graffiti or litter. His paintings exist at a temporal boundary caught between a moment just passed or still waiting to happen. Using enamel paint, traditionally reserved for painting models, the artist’s paintings eschew the traditions of the landscape genre, instead creating meticulously composed works dominated by flat planes of colour.

Born in Coventry, UK in 1966, Shaw received a BA from Sheffield Polytechnic before completing an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art, London in 1998. Shaw was the recipient of the John Moores Painting prize in 1999 and a Turner Prize nominee in 2011. His work has been exhibited extensively in both solo and group exhibitions including at Tate Britain, London, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, South London Gallery, the National Museum of Art, Bucharest, the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester and the Institute of Contemporary Art, London. From 2014 to 2016 he was the artist in residence at the National Gallery, London culminating in a solo exhibition My Back to Nature. Shaw’s work is held in the permanent collection of several international institutions including the Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio, the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Tate, London and the Olbricht Collection, Essen.

He lives and works in Devon, UK.