British artist Shaun McDowell’s dynamic, colorful abstract works exhibit a baroque temperament. Known for his role in the Peckham art scene, a creative hotspot in London from the 2010s onward, he has shown work at galleries and museums including Parasol Unit in London and the Titanic Museum in Belfast. At his studios in northern Italy, he offers an artist’s residency, Demoni Danzanti.
Image: Can you talk a bit about religious or spiritual experiences you had growing up?
SM: I grew up in southeast England in Redhill, halfway between London and Brighton. My parents met at the end of the seventies, and both were drawn to Eastern mysticism. I grew up surrounded by an esoteric sense of spirituality that was somewhat pantheistic in outlook. Viewing all things inseparable—creativity and God as one and the same—certainly influenced my abstract expression.
Image: When did you first begin to identify as an artist, and what did the early years of your career in London look like?
SM: I always drew, painted, and picked up tools. I had a fascination with material and mechanism, which gave me what a child psychologist might call a transitional object. They provided the ability to reflect and, in turn, to develop my own creative language. When I was studying for my BA at Chelsea College of Arts from 2002 to 2005, painting and especially abstraction were mostly derided. I was the odd one out, though I also made film and used technology like my contemporaries.
I always wanted to create a group or encourage a sense of a movement. I met artists at a squat in Peckham, felt a strong sense of potential there, and invited an emerging gallerist named Hannah Barry to meet other artists—like James Capper, Bobby Dowler, and Christopher Green. At that point, being an artist in certain parts of London wasn’t difficult, and there was a simmering sense of possibility. I was fortunate to sell enough paintings early on to support myself, until it seemed the city took more than it would give. I then moved to the Sabina region of Italy, just above Rome.
Image: How did you know it was time to leave London? And what drew you to the Sabine Hills, where you’re based now?
SM: I decided to leave the UK in 2014 and managed the jump in 2018. The sense of potential in a city like Rome is fantastic; so much space is empty. The Sabina itself is a place of magic. There’s probably no other place in Europe with all its benefits: unspoiled countryside, low cost of housing, proximity to airports, and Rome at its feet. I follow in the footsteps of generations of artists who traveled to learn from the art scene in Rome. From my house I look at the commune of Vacone, where Bernini spent time walking and thinking, and also at Cottanello, where he took marble for columns inside Saint Peter’s.
Image: How has the physical and cultural landscape of Italy shaped your work?
SM: I was always attracted to the landscapes of Nicolas Poussin, and I have placed myself directly into that picture. The environment here is one of myth and beauty. The overall sense is one of liberty, but even in Sabina there is death. It is a perfectly good place to die.
Image: Your village, like so many of the ancient rural towns of Italy, is steeped in religious tradition, from historic altars and frescoes to processions on Holy Week and other religious festivals. What has stood out visually and spiritually as you’ve lived through the rhythms of the seasons?
SM: Yes, we are in a land of churches, but it is quieter in that respect than it used to be. The Sabina once had the most seminaries in Italy, but today they stand empty, perhaps waiting to be taken over by visionary and industrious art schools, or by the demonic specter of uninspired capitalism. Time will tell. One thing is for sure: the eyes and hands of artists could do good work among the walls here. At Demoni Danzanti, I’ve been ambitious in building a space that can offer invitations to artists far and wide. You can learn something from the religious processions that walk into the woods and climb the hills, but I think the future of this region will be reaching both without and within. The exchange is necessary.
Image: In recent years, your work has become more atmospheric, as if you’re conjuring entire worlds within your composition. Sometimes they feel more like dense, humid grottos, and other times like storms brewing in the atmosphere, seen from outer space. How do these forms evolve and take shape for you?
SM: On a practical level, my painting is a synthesis of all previous technique. In the past, I worked exclusively in oil stick one moment, or gestural marks and wet-on-dry, layer upon layer, at others. Now the work is more integrated, and the language is finding expression that goes beyond separation. It’s a moment of freedom.
Image: The thick, organic sense of becoming in these works reminds me of the creation narrative in the Book of Genesis, with the spirit of the divine sweeping across the face of the waters. Do those kinds of allegorical interpretations resonate with you?
SM: Sometimes those types of references appear in my work. Mount Hermon (Once a Cedar) from 2013 perhaps conjures a notion of war and peace, angels and demons, cycles of return.
Image: You are now doing an extended series of elliptical works, which recall Italian precursors like Tiepolo. What inspired this?
SM: One day I visited the apartment of an estate agent who had recently passed away. It was full of painting and photography. I found an elliptical work, a typical country scene with umbrella pines and sheep. I was fascinated and asked the son if I could exchange something for it; he gave it to me gladly. I took it home and hung it immediately. It was as if I needed to keep looking at it to understand my interest. It became clear that the elliptical form would represent the creative and solitary
endeavor I had begun when I moved to the Sabina, and a notion of all things coming together, past, present, and future. The ellipse can have classic connotations but is eternal. We all apparently pass through it. The works themselves do not cling to time at all.
Image: What uncharted territory do you sense ahead, as an artist or a curator?
SM: The privilege I have here is to be able to invite other creatives and offer them space. I’m building a series of large studios to allow guests any range of practice. The new painting studio currently being built will offer me what I came here for: unbridled creativity with an unbridled view.
The residency I’m running allows me to widen my understanding of people’s concerns, and the space is a forum for dialogue as well as making. It’s available for writers, sculptors, printmakers, painters, and poets. I am engaging in some projects that bring together different disciplines. Demoni Danzanti is not just for visual artists.
I think an important exchange here would be with American artists, and I hope to facilitate things in both directions. Anyone would want to be making art in the hills above Rome, and the artists of Rome can do great things abroad. An American landscape is a place where the new abstract language fits perfectly.