Low Down Articles
Artist Profiles - Shawn McNevin
Article 46 of 73
From the book Artists of the Gatineau Hill by Catherine Joyce. This article first appeared in the "Artist Profiles" column in the April 13, 2005 issue of the The Low Down to Hull and Back News.
Reprinted with permission. Search complete list of Low Down Articles.
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Artist of the Elements
Shawn McNevin has been on a journey into the elements. From her childhood in Deep River through raising her family in Chelsea to exploring the wilds of Newfoundland, she has quietly absorbed the mysteries of the land. A gradual unfolding, her landscape painting has come to express her essential being. However the decision to pursue her passion has not been easy, as more traditional art forms have fallen out of favour.
In retrospect, pivotal moments stand out. At the Ottawa School of Art she completed a series of pastel drawings of overpasses that would become symbolic of the journey she was on - the huge obstacles she had to pass through on her way into town, the sense of another world far removed from the river, sky and hills that felt like home, the urban reality of juried shows and market demand. Upon graduating in 1989 she turned down an offer by a gallery. "I realized that I had to go my own way, separate from the performance pressure I associated with the city. In painting those overpasses I was curious about what I couldn't see - those shadowy places just out of reach. The 'not knowing' carried me into a mystery - into an inner and an outer landscape that I needed to explore."
The search began. Although she had no direction she took watercolours she had painted in school and smeared charcoal over them. Figures emerged swimming underwater. Intrigued, she displayed them on the Studio Tour. Response was immediate. "Art leads you. It speaks to you and if it rings true, it speaks to the experience of others."
McNevin now sees a progression in her preoccupations from the menacing overpasses, through the submerged swimmers, to the fires alight in the darkness, to the dories drifting on the water. There is an inner current of awareness that 'knows' where she belongs. Landscape the painting of elemental forms and aspects of light.
Eight years ago McNevin left the Studio Tour and opened her own small gallery; Studio 167, in her home. She visited Newfoundland the following year. There she saw in reality the shapes that had long inhabited her mind - the veils of rain, the ancient rocks and ever-changing sea and sky. Her inner vision, steeped from childhood, now found its outer expression in a landscape of constant change. "You lose things - they emerge and disappear the way life opens and closes to you."
With her husband, Bill Sevigny, McNevin has built a house in Cow Head in western Newfoundland, from which she can travel to paint on site. Artist of the elements, Shawn McNevin has found her dream space, coming full circle through the mysteries of landscape to feel at home in her art and in her life. "Newfoundland is nature at its rawest. I take these raw forms and move them back into dream. Out there I am free, at peace. I am who I am meant to be."