My artwork is inspired by anything from the natural world and urban living to dreamscape imagery and ideas from music, books, or film. I believe it is important to constantly be looking at things from different points of view in order to understand them better – and this is no different for my work and ideas, which I approach through different styles and mediums. I try to carry around a camera or use my phone whenever I possibly can, to capture compositions and images I happen upon day to day. It is also important to me that my coursework is exhaustive and that I have more than enough knowledge and inspiration to create – this means historical context, keeping up with changing industries and influences, experimentation with materials and dynamic exercises. I highly value the ways artists inspire one another and for this reason follow many artists working with various materials very closely – from basket weavers and textile designers, to traditional oil painters, sculptors and photographers.
I prize the working state of the materials I use and strive to reach a meditative state while working on my various pieces in the many stages of creation – whether that be my ceramic work, paintings, ink drawings or digitally created pieces. Creating forms through 2D and 3D materials and translating some of the same ideas and imagery throughout is captivating to me in the beautiful way forms can be more functional, conceptual, decorative and so on. Projects from my various courses display a range of qualities and ideas through structured assignments
S T E P H ╭╮ S H A O 