Congratulations Kathleen McShane, 2025 Guggenheim Fellow!
Kathleen McShane’s work involves a language of reductive abstraction and an off-kilter kind of conceptualism; visual elements occupy and hover in strange open space, with multiple, implied ground planes. While rooted in drawing, her work often takes on other various divergent forms—sculpture, painting, textile, mobile—to deconstruct what she calls a ”draw-erly” language exploring physical and psychological spaces and their signifiers. Her paper drawings expand such inventions, too. They are often cut and folded with added collage imagery. Their object-ness abounding with ample white space and deft, gestured marks and textual passages challenge traditional conventions of drawing while color schemes tie seemingly disparate components together.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Kathleen McShane spent several years living in New York, Philadelphia and Detroit before settling in Fayetteville, TX, equidistant between Houston and Austin. She earned her BFA from New York State College of Art and Design at Alfred University and MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She later served as a studio assistant to renown artists Pat Steir and Sol LeWitt. McShane has exhibited her drawings, drawing installations and objects at the Brooklyn Museum, NY; The Drawing Center, NY; Weatherspoon Museum, NC: Aldrich Museum, CT and the Museum for Contemporary Art, Detroit, MI along with galleries across the country.