Kathie Shaw

Kathie Shaw was born and raised in rural central Pennsylvania.  After receiving a BFA with an emphasis on photography from Pennsylvania State University, she traveled to Europe for six months, visiting the countries of Western Europe and Scandinavia mostly camping out of the back of a VW station wagon.  Shortly after returning to the States, she moved to Chicago where she received her Master of Fine Art in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  Eventually, after a number of years working in what was then known as the Oriental Department at the Art Institute of Chicago and at Jan Cicero Gallery, she decided to pursue a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Illinois Chicago.  During her time at UIC, she traveled to Japan on a National Science Foundation Summer Institute Fellowship where she researched Japanese architectural strategies to mitigate seismic activity, which is very prevalent in Japan.  As part of the Rome Program at UIC, she also studied abroad in Rome and Basel, Switzerland.  In addition to notable scholarships like the Carol Phelan Fellowship and a Woman’s Architectural League of Chicago Scholarship, she received an American Institute of Architects student award for the design of an Alzheimer’s Daycare Center.  Upon graduating she began her study of Buddhist philosophy, ongoing to this day, as taught predominantly within the Drikung Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism.

 Her training in architecture has informed both her painting and photography. Her painting process has often relied heavily on chance followed by choosing or accentuating what chance has initially laid down.  The results sometimes resemble plans, maps, topography, or landscapes and sometimes they become more abstract, moving closer to simply emphasizing the liquid quality of the paint medium itself.  The impetus for her paintings often comes from current events related to the changing climate. Her titles often refer to the world of meteorology and to current unprecedented weather events.  In 2020 Covid 19 provided the impetus for a series of Crayola Crayon drawings entitled Chaos, and 2021 has seen another shift in emphasis toward geometry, though these small paintings often also reference landscape and the built environment.