About
Shannon Rae Fincke (b. 1974, Pennsylvania, United States) is a Los Angeles-based artist who creates paintings on wood, canvas, clayboard, and yupo paper. Her work explores ephemerality, interconnectivity, memories, emotions, and psychology—and is influenced by motherhood and interpersonal and ancestral trauma. Working simultaneously in multiple series, Shannon’s range of themes is unified by her mark-making and use of paint, color, and space.
Shannon focuses on the alchemy of mixed water-based media and how it interacts with various substrates, concentrating on control and intentionality versus the organic nature of the media. Her intimate and colorful figurative and landscape paintings vary widely in scale and push the limits of materiality, surface, and abstraction.
Shannon’s paintings have been exhibited internationally and featured in print, film, and television. Most recently, she had solo exhibitions at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Los Angeles and 813 Microgallery in Ann Arbor, MI, and group exhibitions at Chautauqua Institute School of Art, Chautauqua, NY; The Stairwell Space, Bridgeport, CT; Torrance Art Museum NOMAD and TRYST, Torrance, CA; and Spilt Milk Gallery, Edinburgh, UK. She is the recipient of a DAWA residency, and has been featured by I Like Your Work, Artist/Mother Podcast, Shoebox Arts, Voyage LA Magazine, 13ThingsLA, CanvasRebel, VVrkshop Art, Shoutout LA, Women United Art Magazine, and Art Mums United Podcast. She has also presented talks and served on panels for organizations such as Sustainable Arts Foundation, Polytechnic School, and Mount Saint Mary’s University.
Shannon attended the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Arts, studied at The Marchutz School of Art in France, and completed her bachelor’s in Studio Art at Washington and Jefferson College and Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania. She earned her master’s in Painting and Art Education with high honors from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where she was the recipient of a Dean’s Graduate Scholarship and studied intensively with artist Arnold Mesches.
Shannon is also an established art educator, administrator, curator, and gallerist. She has directed programs and instructed art for 30 years in a wide variety of capacities. In 2011 she founded Institute for Visual Arts, a community-based art school for children, teens, and adults, where she currently serves as Director. She is also the owner and director of The Middle Room, a contemporary female-focused gallery concentrating on mid-career artists and on creating connections and conversation, which she founded in 2023. Formerly of New York City, she has lived and worked in Los Angeles since 2002, where she resides with her three daughters and maintains an active studio practice.