Ernest Shaw
Being an image maker affords me the opportunity to highlight the humanity
of the viewer by illustrating the humanity of the subject. My creative process
focuses on the interaction between the work and its audience. My goal is for
the receiver to experience the mystery of creation while interacting with the
portrait. The work’s evolution to becoming art has everything to do with the
dance between the painting and the receiver.
My primary subjects reflect the multiple aspects of the Black/Africanist
experience in the context of a society that confines Blackness to being the
antithesis to whiteness and a response to racialized subjugation. Authentic
portrayals of the Black body are of particular interest to me simply because
there is no other subject I find to be as complex, misrepresented, and
misunderstood.