Shawn Chamberlain is an interdisciplinary artist based in Calgary AB. He attended the Alberta University of the Arts and received a BFA in Drawing in 2018, in 2021 he earned an MFA in Visual Arts from the University of Windsor.

"I spend time drawing where I land my canoe, I offer tobacco, rest, and continue on to a spot suitable to make camp.

A great deal of the work that I do has a direct relationship to the lands I travel through, as well as the landscape’s influence on me. I am interested in how to approach landscape meaningfully and respectfully.

I strive to be aware of colonial histories embedded within depictions of the Canadian wild. I use wood elements in my painting, inspired by the cedar canvas canoe, to bring the constructed and the altered into the landscape; in an abstract way, the crafted wood brings the human into the landscape. Bent cedar pushes and alters the form of my painting, either by extruding through canvas or disrupting the frame, the 3D elements alter the painted landscape and emit a new space.

It is a response to a type of landscape painting that erased the human presence from the land, that creates the impression of a Canadian wilderness free for the taking."

- Shawn