Claire Shakespeare, 'Member'

Claire Shakespeare (b. 1998, Stourbridge, UK) lives and works in London having graduated in Fine Art Painting (BA Hons) at the University of Brighton in 2022.

Their practice captures the everyday experience through an investigation of improvisation and chance within painting. Shakespeare has had two solo shows including ‘Wobbly Knee’ with Devonshire Collective, Eastbourne in 2023 and ‘Frontal Dancer’ at the Fitzrovia Gallery, London in 2022.

"Driven by impulse and material processes, works incorporate the act of painting as a means of searching for familiarity in the unknown. Work is led not by the destination, but to embrace the unknowability and accidental within its own creation. Through processes of scraping back a painterly excess and re-layering, previous unfinished works are resurrected allowing re-occurring motifs to unexpectedly align and reveal new paintings. With tactile surfaces, ambiguous motifs move sinuously between semi-abstraction and figurative objects. Works often suggest parts of the body or landscapes, and in turn become visual innuendos." - Claire Shakespeare, 2024