Shannon Ryan is a mixed media painter from Philadelphia. She received a BFA in drawing and painting at University of the Arts in 2018. She currently lives and works in Philadelphia.

Her process consists of experimenting across disciplines such as printmaking, encaustic, painting, and sewing. Drawing from personal life her work acts as a theatrical reconstruction of diary entries and love letters.

A process she’s developed in the last year involves photographing wet clay sculptures and transferring them using chemical solvents. The transfers are then drawn upon and sealed in layers of encaustic wax. Impressions left by fingers upon the clay produce ruin-like textures where even figures that are youthful bare signs of wear and age. The new series of work seeks to offer form to themes of isolation, anxiety, and love amidst a progressively vulnerable landscape where we may clutch our memories close in order to face the future.