b. 1981, Sussex, England

Painter and curator Shaun McDowell describes his painterly process as a ‘concerted effort to trust with the body, not just the mind’. Lying somewhere between the figurative and the purely abstract, McDowell’s paintings evidence this physicality in their vivid and gestural brushstrokes, made with custom-made paintbrushes as wide as his torso. Taking inspiration from the human form, McDowell entrusts his canvas to the power of extemporaneous mark making. ‘I don’t approach work with a fixed vision’, he states; ‘the uncertain and precarious nature of making art is fresh and exciting for me - there should be risk’.

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