Biography
Shauna Southam was born in greater Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1973. She was raised in Kwazulu-Natal and studied Fine Art in Durban, before moving to London in 1996 to begin her travelling adventures. She returned to South Africa in 2012 and now lives and works as a full time artist in the vibrant city of Durban. Shauna is an emerging artist and is currently preparing work for gallery exhibitions and local and international art fairs.
Coming from an artistic family, art making has always come naturally to Shauna. Drawing prolifically as a teenager, she found inspiration in the early emotive drawings of Van Gogh and Picasso, and the exotic colours and landscapes of Paul Gauguin. Since then she has developed her painting and drawing skills, and in recent years has created a series of mixed media artworks on paper/canvas, with an emphasis on line, pattern, texture, and evocative colour.
Shauna is an artist full of energy and passion. She is motivated by her love for art history, travel and textiles, and her interest in important influences on art production – religion, culture, trade, tradition, fashion and the changing role of women. Working from a variety of sources, she collects images, objects, and woven fabrics that move and inspire her, creating contemporary artworks that also look at how we value artefacts, hand-made work and beauty in the modern world.
Shauna’s paintings and drawings are a combination of abstract and figurative work. She uses a variety of materials and techniques, including acrylic, oil, charcoal, graphite, chalks, inks, metallic pigments and powders, batik dyes, wax, polyester resin, and block printing processes. Her portraits are bold and challenging, capturing something essential in the subject, and establishing a connection between subject and viewer. Fused with the ornamental, the richness of different cultural elements, meditative repeat patterns, diffused ink, saturated colour, and textured layers, her artwork is both decorative and complex.
Some of Shauna’s favourite places to view art are the Saatchi Gallery and Victoria & Albert Museum in London, street art in Munich, and the colourful hand-painted hair salon murals lining the market streets of Durban. Her favourite classic artists include Matisse, Gustav Klimt, Tamara Lempicka and Frida Khalo, and she draws inspiration from contemporary artists such as Swoon, Hush, Chris Offili and Kehinde Wiley, admiring their innovativeness, beauty and challenging of perceptions.
Inspired and invigorated by the energy and creative freedom of her African homeland, Shauna has embraced the opportunity to pursue her own art making full time. She has immersed herself in the contemporary culture of South Africa, an eclectic, complex and diverse fusion of peoples and ideas, setting herself new challenges with her art. Her current work has grown from her own personal synthesis of her experiences and interests.
Shauna has a Bachelor’s Degree of Technology in Fine Art from the Durban Institute of Technology, South Africa. She is a qualified art teacher, with a PGCE in Secondary Art & Design from Plymouth University College, Marjon, UK.
