Kira Maria Shewfelt is a painter based in Los Angeles. Taking influence from literary genres of Magical Realism and Romanticism, her painting explores the physical-spiritual connections of contemporary life in saturated chroma, high touch movement and gestures, and subjects of that portray intimate, athletic, and existential motifs, often set within the natural world. Shewfelt cultivates a visual language, equal parts personal and symbolic, engaging her imagery’s open relationship to a shared and often communal narrative.
She received an MFA from New York University, M.A. in Art History from the University of Southern California, and B.A. in Comparative Literature from Yale University. Recent exhibitions include a solo show with Make Room, “The Yearlings” (Los Angeles) and group shows: “Loop, Hum, Wave” at the Weisman Museum of Art (Malibu), “Unseen Orchestra” at Make Room (Los Angeles), “piano, piano” at Et Al (San Francisco), “The Angels” with Baik Art Gallery & The Noblesse Collection (Seoul), and LA Dreams: Light Touch with CFHill (Stockholm). Her work can be found in the collection of AMOCA Wales and private collections internationally.
Artist Statement:
My work is inspired by the edges of subjectivity and the ways in which a body contains and permits feeling. I’m interested in symbols that reframe everyday moments and current happenings into cosmic propositions, porous to history, repetition, and shared experience. I invite romance and fantasy into the work as politically inclusive gestures, with a history of connecting self and other, and reimagining stasis. My paintings are often about love.