approaches painting as a practice of mirroring. A painting can imitate a form through illusion, but it can also imitate a psychological position. Shea’s work communicates feelings of wanting power, to be taken care of, or the desire to live in a different world. Shea refracts and recontextualizes everyday moments to provide a new lens to look at familiar feelings.

Brendan Shea (b. 1995, Abington, MA.) is an artist whose work explores popular sentiment, affect and the mechanisms of painting. Brendan received his BFA in painting from Maine College of Art in 2018. Currently, he is an MFA candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is a recipient of the David Bruton Jr. Endowment Graduate Fellowship. Shea has exhibited work across the U.S., including Ortega Y Gasset Projects (NYC), Visual Arts Center (Austin, TX.), Grant Wahlquist Gallery (Portland, ME.), B.U. Gallery (Boston, MA.), Good Luck Have Fun (Austin, TX.), SaveArtSpace (Los Angeles, CA.), Able Baker Contemporary (Portland, Me.), SOIL Gallery (Seattle, WA.), and SPACE Gallery (Portland ME.).