ABOUT
CLARISSA SHANAHAN
Clarissa Shanahan is a figurative painter working in oils and gold leaf, based in East Sussex. Born and trained in the United States, she built an early career at the intersection of fine art and film - recreating the paintings of Lee Krasner for the feature film Pollock, and working on productions including HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and Angels in America. That world of constructed narrative, symbolic image-making and cinematic light became the foundation of her painting practice.
Her paintings are largely inspired by her experiences in and love of film, creating narratives and exploring the connections and issues that are germane to both film and painting. She studied drawing and painting at the New York Academy of Art, The Art Students League of New York, and completed her BFA in Painting and Art History at University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2005.
She has taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Leaving the US marked a turning point - freed from established contexts, she moved toward the work she had always been reaching for: figurative paintings rooted in symbolism, mythology and the dreamlike, incorporating gold leaf in the tradition of kintsugi.
Her current series, Golden Bones, grew from a fractured shoulder and an image that arrived in recovery — gold, moving through the broken bone. The series asks where the light lives in a life. The answer is always the same: precisely where the crack was.
She appears in Heat 4 of Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year, Autumn 2026.
Her work has been exhibited in the US, Europe and the UK, and is part of collections including the Museum of Encaustic Art, the Museum of Natural History, the Sundance Channel Offices, The Logan Hotel, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
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