Local resident Ernest Shaw will be exhibiting recent photography in his show, THE FORM OF SHADOWS. This exhibit is primarily focused on photography, a “new” medium in his 50 year career with sculpture, paintings, and drawings.
The photographs integrate his lifelong concerns with mortality, the nature of the “self” and shadow, and the relentless search for integration and wholeness, particularly in the consequences of action and gestures, of moments and eons.
One of these series, ‘Are we flesh or wood?’ explores our fundamental unity and relatedness with the natural world, of life with death. The photographs, primarily visual, are also deeply grounded in our psychological condition, our relationship to ever changing time and place. These themes resonate with Shaw’s other career as psychiatrist, psychotherapist and long-time teacher of mindfulness meditation practices. As Shaw has written, “articulate compassion is common ... silence is the dialogue of centuries”. This body of work asks, “are we one, or two ... or none?