statement

          Shanna Galloway - A Chronology (as prepared for the 2002 show "Survey: Three Decades")

          I began my career in Los Angeles in about 1970, having just earned an M.A. in Drawing
          and Intermedia from the University of Iowa. My B.F.A. is from the University of Texas
          at Austin. I am from Austin, Texas.

          I was attracted to Los Angeles, in the late 1960's by the vitality of its art scene.
          At that time, though, figuration was not favored in the galleries and museums.
          I worked in plastic at that time with the Earth Mother plexiglas box construction
          in this exhibit dating from about 1969.

          This series was followed by the repeated profile image forming the MS. Pythagoras
          series which dates circa 1970-1974.

          My intention was to disguise the touch of the hand in my public work although I
          have drawn weekly from the model since my early training and continue to draw
          the model on a weekly basis. The small figure drawings in this exhibit are from
          these weekly sessions.

          I stopped working with plastics and moved into a period of works on paper in the mid 70's
          through the mid 80's.

          A zen-like participation in movement allowed my interest in direct drawing to merge
          with my interest in dance when a dancer appeared to model in a class I was teaching.
          I developed a series, Dancedrawings, at this time and chose Los Angeles
          dancer/choreographer Karen Goodman to work with. We worked together for about 5 years,
          roughly 1975-1980. I drew her while in movement. In the 90's, I enlarged and re-worked
          these drawings and they are the ones included in this show.

          The portraits in cross-hatching are from the early to the mid-80's.

          In the mid 1980's, I began to make life-sized works on paper with dry pigment
          and mixed media. Vertigo is from this time. With color now a factor in my work
          I decided to approach oil painting with Renaissance or old master technique.
          The oil paintings date from the mid 90's and are still current.

          A sub-series, studies of skies drawn in real time from sunsets, began as I was
          painting Persephone. The larger skies, the Millennium Dairy, document the sky
          - also drawn in real time - as we moved into the 2000's. I drew a sky for each
          month of the year 2000 beginning with December 1999 and ending with
          New Year's Eve 2000.

          My current series, in oil on canvas, deals with the muses of Greek mythology.
          This series is in diptych and triptych form juxtaposing images and often
          including text.