Bio

Andrew K. Shepherd was born in Las Vegas, NV in 1999. He received a BFA in Painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, GA in May 2021. Maturing alongside the internet, in the suburbs of Las Vegas, and in an America defined by class inequity, Shepherd makes artwork about the process of remembering. First collecting images, commodities, and cultural artifacts, then utilizing intuition and abstraction to synthesize them into paintings and objects, Shepherd is recording his experience of the world. Andrew now lives and works in Wheat Ridge, CO.

Statement

I experience a world that feels absurd, abundant, like it’s crashing in on itself - and I am enchanted by it. I want to collect as much as I can remember of this experience, in all its vastness, discomfort, challenge, fullness, and pleasure.

Abstraction presents me with a set of tools to recall and present my understanding of this experience through the process of composing the image.

This flowing of thought to image allows me to freely move through memory, place, cultural artifacts, dreams, images, feeling – and this presents me a freedom I cannot ignore.

By building a physical and visual language for these memories, I can present my wonder and hunger for this experience clearly and accessibly.

I hope to make work that, by asking the viewer to investigate the process of making the work, the audience will have the tools to understand my understanding – and by proxy the world we share.