Shaun Downey at Engine Gallery

Statement

The first experience viewing one of Shaun Downey's portraits is like the opening line of a great novel. It creates tension, forces you to ask questions, to look toward the future and to call forth imagery from the past.

We long to understand who his subjects are, what their lives are like, and what chain of events led them to this captured moment. His meticulously rendered paintings pull us in, and, with no definitive answers to our questions, we become lost in the creation of our own narrative.

Influenced by the great painter/story-tellers of the past including Vermeer and Norman Rockwell, Shaun strives to breath fresh life into Realist painting by infusing images from his own life with classical ideas and modern cultural references.

Biography

Born in 1978 Shaun Downey spent his childhood in Oshawa, Ontario. His father worked at the local General Motors plant, as do many of the residents of the small but mighty city. As the end of high school drew near Shaun decided to stick with his gut and pursue a career as an artist.

After getting rejected for entry to the animation program at Sheridan College, he found a small animation school opening up in Toronto where a few fellow art students from his high school were working . When he arrived at the school he was amazed to see rows of charcoal cast drawings, highly rendered figure drawings and classically inspired paintings. The animation classes were a new addition to the already thriving classical drawing and painting school called “Angel Studios”, which was headed by painter Michael John Angel.

A student of the great Italian painter Pietro Annigoni, Michael John Angel was running two schools at the time, one in Toronto and one in Florence Italy which he still heads today. Once Shaun saw the level of quality in the student’s work, he immediately switched his focus from animation to figurative drawing and painting, and began classes the next week.

After a year of study at Angel Studios, he decided to pursue an illustration career and enrolled in Sheridan College’s three year illustration program. At Sheridan Shaun built his sensibilities and tastes regarding what he wanted to express in his work, and at the end of the three years he decided that being an illustrator was not for him. He wanted to spend more time on his work that the profession usually allows, so decided to start exhibiting his paintings.

Shaun’s first show at the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition in 2003 was a great success, and Shaun soon moved to Toronto’s west end. After showing at several group exhibitions around Toronto, he became represented by Ingram Gallery in 2005, having two solo exhibitions and showing at four Toronto International Art Fairs with them. In 2010 Shaun joined the roster of Engine Gallery in Toronto’s historical Distillery District, and will have his first solo exhibition in October 2011.

Most recently, Shaun’s painting “Blue Coco” has been selected for exhibition in the BP Portrait Award 2010, that is exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London England in June. The most prestigious exhibition of its kind, Shaun’s work was one of about 50 paintings selected from over two thousand entries. “It is a great honour to be a part of such an important exhibition, important both for myself and for the increased appreciation of figurative painting in general.”