Kathleen  Shanahan

Kathleen Shanahan was born in Galesburg, IL and lives in Wichita, KS. She received her BFA in 1969 from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI and her MFA in 1976 from the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ. She taught at colleges in Arizona, Oregon, Missouri and Kansas. She taught at Wichita State University from 1983-1997. She also lectured in painting and drawing at University of Kansas from 2001-2002. She conducted research at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, Japan from 1981-1982. She has had exhibits in Paris, Hong Kong, and Japan, as well as Kansas.

“My work has never fallen into a concise genre such as “landscape” or “still life”. Instead, my images are hybrids which incorporate elements of nature from the micro to the macro. I record nature for the intrinsic value of doing so, and for the analytical insights it yields; working “en plein air” is a meditation and communion with nature. Nature is the basis of all design and structure, and as such pertains to my own artistic processes. As a visiting scholar in Japan, I focused on gardens and the heightened role nature plays in religion and culture. Animals are more and more evident in my imagery as are action-oriented elements from sources such as the dance, theatre or sports, contrasting static with active. The sculptural properties of natural objects, as well as the dynamic properties, such as flux, and life cycle, are of interest to me.”