About

ARTIST BIO:
The artist Shawn Hricz resides on the island of Manhattan, where he visualizes and creates. His method of expression is achieved through collage, found objects, and traditional painting.

For more than 20 years Shawn worked in Hollywood as an award-winning artist in the motion picture and television industry and witnessed firsthand the celebrity obsession cast upon and then infiltrated throughout modern society. In certain instances, Shawn glamorizes the personalities on his canvas. But via the majority of his mixed-media creations, he cleverly brings into focus a satirical reflection on the culture of celebrity, as well as the blinding truths of the myth of fame. Whereas Warhol invented the art of putting the individual on a pedestal, Shawn playfully reveals one’s imperfections, with an illuminating stroke of the brush.

Shawn’s beautiful use of color and inventive layered collage and found objects draw the viewer into his world of three-dimensional storytelling. Whether on magazine covers or gallery walls, he has both admired and mocked his subjects. His unconventional works shock while at the same time leave his audience wanting more.

ARTIST STATEMENT:
"Standing in front of Picasso’s Guernica for the first time—when I was just a boy—moved and changed me. I saw that a visual image had the power to excite the soul and awaken awareness through far more than beauty alone. Equipped with this realization, I then knew that a creative path of a similar kind would be the one I would follow.

In my work I use found objects, traditional painting, and layered collage to visualize a story. My art is both satirical and celebratory, in certain instances exposing the dirty little secrets of fame and the individuals who covet it, and in other cases glamorizing these personalities. The figurative portraiture are each unique with a cutting-edge message, jumping off the canvas in three-dimensional form, color, and context.

I lived and worked in Hollywood for many years and witnessed the Tinseltown lore, which has inspired in me a passion to portray fame and celebrity, albeit in a different light than that cast by Warhol. My unconventional pieces have been known to shock, but once viewed and experienced, leave you wanting more." -Shawn Hricz