Description
ARTIST STATEMENT
My newest body of work, The National Park Project, has resulted as a continuation of my works in the Fragility of the Sacred series, comprising paintings and individual handmade artists’ books integrating idea, text and visual images, with the theme of fragility
I am looking at fragility of not only the wider environment, but the fragility of our own lives, both in terms of physical fragility but in terms of emotional fragility so common in our current world situation. As I age, I understand more significantly how fragile our plans are for our futures, and I often use symbolism to explore and portray these ideas.
This work is a continuation of the work I have undertaken as an Artist in Residences in various exceptional natural environments. I took three weeks as an Artist in Residence at the Leighton Artist Colony, Banff Centre for the Arts. During my time there, the series on “fragility” transformed to Fragility of the Sacred, as I embraced the sacred ground on which I worked. I began to think of what we hold sacred, and how we often devalue that, and how to resolve that issue in my own life. The sacred quality of the landscape and earth is embraced by First Nation people who live in the Banff National Park area; I found their idea of Vision Quest within the land appealing as I worked there, and found passionate inspiration in my research and direct work in the land.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Beth Shadur has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and abroad, including at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Drawing Center in NYC. She has created over 150 large public murals as public, private and community art projects in both the United States and Great Britain. She has taught and served as a visiting artist at many colleges and universities and her work appears in many publications, books and catalogues, including Twentieth Century Watercolors, Abbeville Press; Art and Cartography, Art Institute of Chicago.
Shadur has been awarded numerous Ragdale Fellowships and is a Thomas Watson Fellow from Brown University; from 2004-6, she served as Executive Director of ARC Gallery, Chicago. She participated in the Cool Globes Public Art Project in Chicago in 2007, and in 2008, was Artist-in-Residence at the Burren College of Art in Ireland through a Governor’s Award for International Arts Exchange from the Illinois Arts Council. She has been an Artist
© Beth Shadur