Dana Shavin

WORK HISTORY I am originally from Atlanta but make my home in the rural mountains of north Georgia. In 1986 I completed my master’s degree in clinical psychology and worked for ten years as a therapist and psychological examiner in the community mental health and school systems. I left my job—and my career—in 1996 to pursue painting and writing full time. HOW THEY HAPPEN My paintings begin with a blank canvas, a palette knife loaded with molding paste, and a picture in my head, and end two days to two weeks later with multiple layers of acrylic paint, oil pen, and a poly-acrylic gloss resin finish. INFLUENCES I have always been drawn to the dream-like images in the work of Marc Chagal, the elongated figures of Modigliani, the chunky humans that populated Botero’s paintings, and the broad-stroked expressionless animals of Franz Marc. I am also eerily fascinated by cartoon figures and how much emotion can be portrayed by simplicity of line and style. PHILOSOPHY As a writer and therapist, I believe that metaphor is the building block of insight. In this vein, my paintings state the obvious (a dog on the furniture, a woman in a red dress) but lend themselves to any number of storylines or subtexts. I paint quickly, giving free rein to my subconscious and thrilling to the story taking shape on the canvas. Because I paint scenes from ordinary life, my paintings seem to arrive on the doorstep of the viewer’s consciousness bearing his or her own narrative account of the way things are.