David Shanahan

Born of Irish parents, I spent most of my formative years in Ireland where I found myself living amongst a primitive, kindly people, a peasant society that seemed to exist in a strange kind of stasis: a kind of nether world that left them in an almost schizophrenic state, as they tried to balance their ancient pagan beliefs, with what seemed to them,at the time, to be the new fangled repression of the Catholic church. Looking back on it now, it seems to me that their pagan beliefs held much more sway over their thinking than the teachings of Rome but then we all tend to see what we want to take see, so I'm happy to accept that others may think differently. Either way, one thing I do know, and that's that those experiences have come to provide most of the subject matter for much of my work ever since.

After I'd left school, knowing little I have to confess, other than the convoluted teachings of the church, I attended Kingston school of Art in Surrey, where I studied painting for three years. Having been a rather sickly child, I was often bed bound, so, if a pencil and a piece of paper happened to come to hand off I went: I'd apparently drawn from the age or three or four, or rather scribbled, as my mother called it, s...

Kingston school of Art, in Surrey.

And later, as a mature student, Dartington Collage of Arts in Devon.

Birmingham Art enter, ~ one man ~ 1978.
TSW. Award winner, ~ 1979.
Billian-De-Contemporain,~ Paris ~ 1981.
Plymouth Art gall and Museum ~ one man ~ 1981.
Exeter Art centre ~ one man ~ 1985.
Blue Moon gallery, New Mexico. one man ~ 1985
Salisbury Art centre ~ one man ~ 1989
Bon Echo gall, Tsuymamam, Japan. one man ~ 1993
Rainyday Gall, Penzance, one man ~ 1997
Red Dot gall, London one man ~1999
Unicorn Gall, Chelsea ~ 2000
Affordable Art fair, London, ~ 2000 ~~ 2016
Affordable Art fair, New York. ~2000.
The Biscuit Factory gall, Newcastle one man ~ 2001 ~~2007
Broomhill gallery. N.Devon. one man. ~ 2002
Goldfish Gall St Ives, one man ~ 2007
Anne Bowie Gall, Totnes Devon. one man ~ 2009
Andy Balman Gall Corbridge. one man ~ 2013
Imagine gall, Long Melford Suffolk. one man. ~ 2015
Over the moon gallery St Agnes, Cornwall. ~ 2015
Art Spaces gallery Totnes Devon, one man ~ 2016