Statement
Dr. Martin Shaw is a painter, mythologist and wilderness teacher. For four years he lived under canvas and has found painting is a way of communicating something of that experience. The practice of drawing that is clear in his paintings are, especially in his 2011 section, robustly contrasted with a growing painterly concern. A scholar from the British School in Rome, his awards also include the Bretherton, Elgood, Price award for outstanding achievement in the Arts and the Robert Bly GMC scholarship. He exhibits occasionally rather than habitually.
He is the author of 'A Branch From The Lightning Tree: Ecstatic Myth and the Grace in Wildness' (2011 white cloud press) and director of the Westcountry School of Myth and Story. He has collaborated with Robert Bly, Daniel Deardorff, Coleman Barks, Gioia Timpanelli, John Densmore of the Doors and many others on spoken word projects or live engagements, but is just now becoming known for his painting practice as well. Issues within the paintings, although through a very different medium, engage with much of his written thinking. Dr Shaw holds a PhD from the University of Plymouth and is visiting lecturer on Desmond Tutu's leadership programme at Oxford University.
www.schoolofmyth.com
Biography
The painting is some kind of continuem of sensations and ideas that goes back a long time, centuries, and i'm nourished by that. I hope bits of old painters stick up in the work like the tips of great icebergs as my wyrd tugboat passes.
I know of no occupation that messes with your head like painting; it's real magician territory if you take it seriously.