Influences
Welcome to Shaun's Website
Artistic Influences:
The Irish artists Jack B Yeats, Patrick Collins, and Gerard Dillon Sean Scully together with Vincent Van Gogh, Pierre Bonnard, Edward Vuillard, Claude Monet and Paul Gauguin are inspirational to Shaun. Their control of colour, pattern and tone imbued with their personal style/expression talk to the artist and give him the inspiration to just paint .
His longterm American favourites are Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth, Thomas Hart Benton, Charles Sheeler, Georgia O'Keeffe and Grant Wood.
These American artists first engaged the former University of Washington student of art by their honesty and integrity when it came to their subject matter and the manner in which they painted it. It was as if he discovered by looking at their work, what all art is meant to do..to educate, record and express life as we experience it. These American artists were agents of illumination for their own environment. They have made America richer for recording it through their eyes. Shaun teaches art in Tralee, but yearns to do likewise within his environment. He does so through his work to great effect.
Shaun's studio mentor at the University was for a time the nationally recognised painter, Jacob Lawrence . Shaun met Jacob in his final years of his Undergraduate Fine art Degree, in the School of Art at the University of Washington in Seattle in 1987. At that time Shaun was painting narative work of Irish context. Immediately he was struck by the soft spoken Lawrence and listened intently to his thoughtful words of direction for his own work.
Shaun's induction to Art at the University was initially delivered by the likes of Spencer Moseley, Gene Pizzuto, Bill Hixson, Ken Pawula, Norman Lundin and Chuck Smith and Michael Spafford to name a few.
His unique Irish and UK and US expriences have and will always be a strength to inspire. These Washington artists introduced him for the first time to a variety of new methods and techniques that he now employs in his own work and into his teaching.
Shaun lives and works in Co. Kerry, Ireland.
The Collections
Collection A- West of Ireland
style : semi-realism
Content: Landscape and architecture
Exemplified by the landscape of the West, Shaun spends time visiting coastal regions and paints on location the scene before him. The immediacy of the scene as it plays itself out by its changing light and elements is one that he aims to capture. Working this way enables him to catch the essence of the place, as did the Irish impressionists of the 1850s. and the post impressionist Vincent Van Gogh
Shaun often wakes early in Castlegregory village, West Kerry, to find the spot where he will best work. He often scouts the area beforehand. Scenes of Castlegregory and Dingle and his home in Kerry have been absorbing to him in recent years
Collection B-interiors and still-life
Style: semi-realism
Content: nature and architecture
This collection consists of work completed at his home at "Kingsland" in North Kerry, between the towns of Listowel an Abbeyfeale. Kingsland House where Shaun resides, is in a rural area. The house is of the Georgian period and was formally a Landlords house in the locality. It was built circa 1845 and retains much of the origianal features. Shaun Has lived here since 1999.
Collection C - Paintings of North Kerry
Style: semi-realism
Content: Interior and exterior
Completed at the artists home and his locality of Listowel and Abbeyfeale, in North Kerry. Many of the pieces are painted with an immediacy of working outside. The scencs depict the rural work of farmers as they affect the landscape with machine and also the of the natural beauty of the wild untouched
landscape and buildings of the area.
Content: nature and architecture
This collection consists of work completed at his home at "Kingsland" in North Kerry, between the towns of Listowel an Abbeyfeale. Kingsland House where Shaun resides, is in a rural area. The house is of the Georgian period and was formally a Landlords house in the locality. It was built circa 1845 and retains much of the origianal features. Shaun Has lived here since 1999.
Collection C - Paintings of North Kerry
Style: semi-realism
Content: Interior and exterior
Completed at the artists home and his locality of Listowel and Abbeyfeale, in North Kerry. Many of the pieces are painted with an immediacy of working outside. The scencs depict the rural work of farmers as they affect the landscape with machine and also the of the natural beauty of the wild untouched
landscape and buildings of the area.