Shalen Stephenson (b. 1991 Vancouver, Canada) is a Chicago-based painter who employs an array of different paint applications and techniques. He uses industrial spray guns, airbrushes, acrylic paint, oil paint, enamels, stencils, tape, etc. Stephenson’s palette is often bright, vibrant, and opaque, including metallics, pearlescent, and variations of matte and gloss finishes. His paintings incorporate forms of storytelling, whether that be autobiographical or a response to societal and/or geopolitical issues. Stephenson mostly works within abstraction, his works often containing patterns, geometry, representational elements, and digital iconography.
Shalen Stephenson was born and raised in Vancouver BC, a cityscape enveloped in natural beauty and surrounded by forests, oceans and mountains. This is where his intrigue into the dichotomy of human made and the natural world began.
He received his BFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2015 and his MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2018. Since moving to Chicago, his work has grown to be influenced by art movements such as The Chicago Imagists and The Harry Who, comics, psychedelic posters, and commercial advertisements. This is evident in his use of imagery and colour, but notably in the tactility of the ultra- smooth finished surface of his paintings.
Since graduating, he has worked as a set builder and scenic painter in the industry of photo production, designing, building, and faux finishing semi-realistic yet artificial spaces. His most recent work contains influences from this occupation in the form of building material textures such as bricks, concrete, and wood, as well as architectural elements including passage ways that reference doorways and windows.