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Clarissa Shanahan is a multidisciplinary visual artist with over 35 years of professional experience spanning fine art, scenic painting for film, and decorative arts. Her creative practice is rooted in storytelling, symbolism, and mood, exploring the spaces between reality, dream, and myth. Having trained at the New York Academy of Art, and later at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania (BFA), she developed a classically grounded yet experimental visual language. Her work draws deeply on her background in cinema, history, and the esoteric—often creating a Clarissa Shanahan is a multidisciplinary visual artist with over 35 years of professional experience spanning fine art, scenic painting for film, and decorative arts. Her creative practice is rooted in storytelling, symbolism, and mood, exploring the spaces between reality, dream, and myth. Having trained at the New York Academy of Art, and later at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania (BFA), she developed a classically grounded yet experimental visual language. Her work draws deeply on her background in cinema, history, and the esoteric—often creating atmospheric, narrative driven paintings that function as modern-day allegories.
Over the years, her achievements have included solo and group exhibitions both in the U.S. and Europe. Her paintings are held in the permanent collections of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Museum of Encaustic Art, and the Museum of Natural History. In addition to her fine art practice, she has worked as a scenic artist on over 40 major film and television productions, contributing to projects such as Pollock—for which she recreated Lee Krasner’s paintings and building immersive visual worlds that tell emotionally resonant stories. Her film credits, union membership with United Scenic Artists Local 829, and affiliation with the British Film Designers Guild reflect a long-standing engagement with visual storytelling at the highest professional level.
Her creative partnerships include working with institutions such as the Getty Center, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where she also taught for 18 years. She has led workshops internationally and continues to contribute to the broader artistic community through mentoring and exhibitions.
In 2024, while on an extended international research residency, she experienced a serious shoulder fracture that halted her oil painting practice. During this time, she began working in ink and casein on paper, illuminating symbolic drawings with gold and silver leaf. She imagined her bones healing with gold, as in Kintsugi. This unexpected constraint catalyzed a major shift in her work and resulted in the emergence of the Golden Bone series —images rooted in healing, transformation, and metaphysical symbolism. This development represents a new chapter in her practice, one that she is ready to fully explore. She is at a pivotal moment, with the experience, vision, and urgency to expand this work into a significant and publicly engaging body of contemporary symbolic painting. ...
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