Kathleen McShane is an artist whose primary medium is drawing, in a broad definition of that term. Major benchmarks include : work shown at the Drawing Center in NY; work purchased for the collection of Werner Kramarsky; a papered room installation at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in CT; exhibitions at Gallery Joe in Philadelphia, and at Susanne Hilberry and Paul Kotula galleries in metropolitan Detroit; and residencies at MacDowell colony, Millay Colony and Cites des Artes in Paris.
McShane’s drawings often include collage elements and are cut into irregular shapes. She stacks areas of color pencil shifts and fluid color ink groupings to build structures in action. The collaged elements of full color bookshelf images (cut from magazines) echo the color verticals and horizontals. McShane’s self-designed drawing frames also often serve as an integral part and may also be irregularly shaped, gradated in subtle color, and fit semi-modularly in configurative groupings. Another body of dimensional, papier-mâché, white, rock form drawings (“rock footholds”) has black lines painted at planar edges and makes a nod to Dubuffet. They can be configured in neat vertical, horizontal and diagonal rows to mimic a framework structure, or they can stand alone; they can imply a single point in space, a rock-climbing wall, and a drawing made of multiple “natural” forms/ points in space. In all of her work there is a tension between order, structure, and chance.
Kathleen has degrees from Alfred University’s College of Art and Design and Cranbrook Academy of Art. She was born in Cleveland, Ohio and has lived in NY, Philadelphia, Detroit, and outside of Austin, TX. She has taught drawing and printmaking to both majors and non-majors at Rutgers University, Sarah Lawrence College, Tyler School of Art, and the University of Michigan.