Enamel paint artist

Scenes from the Passion: The Blossomiest Blossom, 2001
Humbrol enamel on board

George Shaw's paintings are rich evocations of place and memory. Inspired by the council housing estate in Tile Hill, Coventry where he grew up, the paintings, both romantic and oppressive, depict empty playing fields, pubs, bus stops, lock-up garages, run-down housing estates and for the first time, war memorials and graveyards.

This was the first major exhibition to examine Shaw's acclaimed style of painting that involves a meticulous rendering in Humbrol enamel paint. 2004 What I Did This Summer, Dundee Contemporary Arts.

During his MA at the Royal College of Art, London, he took a trip back to his parents’ house and started photographing the landscape of his adolescence. These shots became the basis for an ongoing series of paintings charting the estate’s topography, a concrete litany of nowhere places. Rendered in the glossy gloop of enamel model aircraft paint, Shaw’s pictures pick out Tile Hill’s tiniest details: the piebald shadows on the back of a police station, the sun beating down on mottled paving slabs, Christmas lights glimmering wetly through a distant pub window. Puddles feature a lot, as do ponds and slick, moist asphalt.

Good article on the artist: http://www.preromanbritain.com/colin/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=65%3Ageorge-shaw&catid=37%3Aprofiles-and-interviews&Itemid=27

http://www.humbrol.com/paints/enamel-paints/