‘Having been raised largely in southern Ireland, the world I grew up was dominated by two powerful stories. The primary one was of course Catholic, with its stories of angels and passivity, of repressed sexuality and the possibility of resurrection. The other stories tended to be much more earthy late night tales, full of talking birds and animals, of shape shifters, lonely ghosts, nature goddesses and dying kings. The resulting tension between Christian and Pagan, myth and reality, past and present, made a deep impression on me as a boy, and they continue to inform my work, providing me with a rich iconic feast of subject matter.’

In fact David Shanahan’s story is rather more complex. His Irish parents moved to England a few months before he was born, and within months, at the outbreak of war, his father joined the army, taking him to Burma and Singapore, so David was almost seven before he saw his father again. In the meantime he and his mother returned to Ireland, to the place where she had grown up, and during the following years he was sent back to Ireland to stay with relatives for three or four months every summer.

When he left school at fifteen he attending Kingston School of Art for three years, and would probably have won a place at the Royal College of Art in London had it not been for a rather torrid affair with a high-born young woman whose parents thoroughly disapproved of him, and given that they were people of wealth and influence his chances of a place evaporated.

After leaving art school he travelled around Europe for a while before eventually settling down to live in west Penwith in Cornwall, getting married and spending twelve years living in the artistic hub of St Ives, then regarded as a British outpost of abstract art. That had little influence except that none of the local galleries was prepared to even look at the work of a figurative artist, but he made a living mostly from landscape painting. After his marriage broke up he left Cornwall and travelled the world for several years until, feeling a need to be settled, he went to live in south Devon where he has lived ever since. Apart from painting he did a little teaching, and began to think of specialising in art therapy, and went back to college at Dartington College of Art. But the art world had changed, and by then he was exhibiting and his work was selling well, so he gave up the idea to concentrate on painting.

David Shanahan started exhibiting in 1978, and the following year had his first solo exhibition at Plymouth Art Gallery. He has since exhibited regularly in Devon and Cornwall, and has had shows internationally in San Francisco, New York, New Mexico, Paris, and Tsuymama in Japan.

David Shanahan’s website can be found here.