September Artist Spotlight
Meet Kris Shaffer and her beloved gardening companion Cleo
I have been making art since I was a little kid. We all did. My Mom grew up on a farm and it seemed she could do anything! She wielded the power tools in our home growing up and instilled in us that we could do anything also. When I was in high school we moved from Prairie Village (suburban Kansas City) to a farm north of Marysville, Kansas. Culture shock. I spent so much time during my high school years driving around on country roads and still to this day I find comfort, adventure, and hope on those roads. My mom is ninety-nine years old and still lives on that farm, alone! She loves it and says it is her exclusive retirement home for one. Rest assured, she is safe and checked on regularly by her community.
Kansas landscapes are in my blood. I recently showed my work at South Coast Artist Open Studios where a woman who has ties to Kansas recognized the light! We all have complex relationships to where we were raised and Kansas will always be in my heart.
I studied art at Kansas State University and transferred to Massachusetts College of Art (and Design) where I received a BFA in painting. I moved to Santa Fe, NM, for a year to paint more glorious landscapes, yet Kansas landscapes are the ones from my core. After NM, I moved to San Francisco where I married and had two sons. I also started working as an interior designer which kept us fed and occupied my time for years. In 1999, we moved back to Newton to raise the kids. After the boys graduated from high school, we moved to Framingham. I still do some interior design, but now my focus has returned to pure art and it feels great!
During the years when the kids were growing up I started doing book paintings. I studied with George Nick at Mass Art and really wanted to do urban landscapes, but I wanted to be close to the kids. I chose books as a way of achieving a similar structure as buildings, while controlling the light and climate in my small studio. I might paint books intermittently forever! They are a great subject in so many ways:)
My other passion is figure drawing and painting. I find drawing the human body, clothed or unclothed, restorative. It is my balm to the chaos of today’s world.
I currently am running the working artist group space at the Natick Mall. We offer figure drawing (clothed) twice a week. Thursdays 7pm-9pm and Saturdays 3pm-5pm. Sessions are currently $20 for two hours. It is a wonderful space and so fun! We hope to start a painting group soon as well as additional art workshops. The mall project is so exciting. It is an unexpected oasis of creativity where people wander in and find it surprising yet soothing, so they say:). We are in the proof of concept stage so we really need support and participation to grow the space so we can stay. We plan on offering all sorts of workshops for artists, creatives and people who want to make something of their own. It is a super fun experience. Come visit or learn more the classes here.
