Shaw Lenox

Life update: One year of tattooing in the books, and I'm going to be starting my MFA this summer at SAIC's low residency program. Tattooing has been a new muse in my practice, and I'm very proud of how far I've come in such a short time. I love how much it interacts with identity, transformation and abstraction in such permanent terms. I see myself doing this for a long time. I'm also excited to start my MFA, explore SAIC and Chicago while being able to keep my life in Seattle.

This painting is a distillation of many of the themes in my work and its scale allows it to really engulf the viewer. The tattoo was my first done on a human (myself) a year ago, and is a bridge between where I was and where I'm going. It didn't heal the cleanest but you live and you learn lol.

I'm also sad to say I've left my first Seattle art studio. It was where I really came into myself as an artist after undergrad and also where I learned to tattoo. To leave is to change and it was time. My new space is almost ready, and I'm excited to continue my practice there.

If you've engaged with my art or gotten a tattoo from me, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. I'm so grateful to wake up every day and choose creation. I love you!

Emissary, 2022. One from the archives. I left this angel alone in my studio for like three years waiting for the inspiration to finish it. But thankfully, the painting was already finished. Go see it in person, it's huge.

Sketchbook paintings and drawings! Tattooing has been good for me getting me back into drawing, and it's influence is kinda trickling into everything

Awake, my first finished painting of 2025. Returned to a little more experimental mark making ethos, bringing back some of my old sensibilities. There are an uncountable number of paintings below this one.

Eden. 2024.

This painting sat unfinished for almost a year and then I realized it was actually already finished.

Trash Piece. 2024.

Sculpture is slow and ever shifting for me, and this one came together of many months slowly hoarding trinkets and sparkly things.

I love you San Francisco!! To all the people that made this trip great thank you so much. You recharged my creative battery in so many ways. To Ryan and Buddie congratulations, and I wish you many years of joy and laughter. Until next time!

Moon 2024

Another baseline. These paintings were made from the same canvas to be together and reflect the viewer back. They each contain a part of another, in the same way as we all contain parts of each other.

Sun 2024

This painting has become a baseline for me, and future work I make in this realm. I am very happy with how it turned out!

Storytelling 2025. These past couple days have been some of the scariest this century. But I hold firm that with community and friends and family and love we will be able to survive. I hope you all can extend grace and light to those around you and fight for what you believe in. Also there's so much hair in this painting 😈