Shawn Marshall

Part of the gallery’s invited 2025 Collective, the gallery will be presenting Shawn’s work at LA Art Show, Los Angeles Convention Center, January 7-11, 2026

Shawn Marshall is a Kentucky‑based mixed‑media and collage artist whose architectural training and sculptural sensibility inform every layer of her work. With a Master of Architecture (Fine Art minor) from Cornell University and a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Kentucky, Shawn weaves questions of structure, space, material, and narrative into richly textured compositions. Shawn also holds a Master of Art in Teaching and brings her passion for creativity into the classroom as a visual arts educator.

Marshall's work has earned national & international recognition, with features in Curatory Magazine, Contemporary Collage Magazine, Create! Magazine, Suboart Magazine, and others. She has received multiple Artist Enrichment Grants from the Great Meadows Foundation, including support for attending the 2024 Venice Biennale, and she was a 2024 & 2025 resident artist at Jen Tough Gallery, where she was featured in a solo exhibition in November of 2024.


Statement: My work explores the intersection of memory, architecture, the sacred, and the profane. Through collage and mixed media, I construct layered spaces that hold tension—between permanence and decay, stillness and transformation. Sacred spaces, domestic interiors, and industrial structures frequently appear, reframed through surreal compositions that question how we move through time and space, both physically and emotionally.

A recurring theme in my practice is the role of women within spaces traditionally shaped by men—religious, institutional, and architectural. I reflect on how my body has felt in these environments: safe, seen, or out of place. Sometimes I’m quietly challenging power structures; other times, I’m simply existing within them. By placing feminine figures in these spaces, I explore how presence alone can shift the atmosphere—how resilience, stillness, or mere visibility can recenter the narrative and prompt reflection on the politics of scale, power, and belonging.

In a parallel body of work, I create abstract mixed-media pieces using found and discarded materials—wallpaper, wood, fragments of everyday life. I sand, peel, and layer until parts of the past remain visible beneath the surface, like emotional ruins or architectural ghosts. These works are acts of excavation, revealing what lingers and what might be renewed.