About the Artist
Shanna Bruschi
Shanna Bruschi is a Bay Area painter living in San Anselmo, north of the Golden Gate Bridge, known for colourful, expressive abstract oils and abstracted figures. She lived in Italy for many years, studying art in Rome and then in Siena, where, while working as a translator, she spent her free time riding the countryside on a rusty hot-pink bike and painting as much as possible back at the vineyard where she lived. She brings her background as an art director and graphic designer to her work. Her canvases are built up physically: thick layers of paint, mostly laid on with a palette knife, worked and reworked, scraped and peeled, until the texture becomes an object as well as a space. Loud, rhythmic music drives her studio sessions, and brushstrokes often follow the beat. She does not paint from reference images; the forms come from her own catalogue of thoughts and experiences, internal worlds she calls the landscapes of her mind. A marathon runner, she has long found daily inspiration on the trails of Mount Tam. She has been a gallery artist at Stafford Gallery in Healdsburg and won Second Place Best of Show at the Marin County Fair (2017).
“Abstract oils and abstracted figures by Marin painter Shanna Bruschi — all her work, finally in one place.”
The Process
Inside the Studio
The Painting Process
Shanna works physically and fast. She energetically covers the canvas with thick layers of oil, mostly with a palette knife, then works and reworks them, scraping and peeling, until the surface has a restless energy of its own. The method gives her little control, which is the point: the paintings suggest emotions and states of being rather than detail, and she loves rebelling against the rules of order to find passages of harmony in the discord. Music is part of the process. Loud, rhythmic music fills the studio, her brushstrokes follow the beat, and figures and forms appear and disappear as the music moves her. She uses no reference images. Figures reveal themselves while she paints and often morph into something completely different by the time the work is finished.
Where to Find the Work