This World We’ve Built - Interview with Artists Abby Shahn and “Fang“

Abby Shahn has been living and working in Maine since 1969; she is one of the state’s most important and celebrated artists. Her work hovers between the figurative and the non-objective, showing that no boundaries are needed. She explains, “I believe that all painting is abstract. However, even in the most non-objective paintings, I always find there is an illusion of space that is a kind of realism.“ Critic Ken Greenleaf describes Shahn’s ability to paint, as being like a highly-skilled jazz performer, she just picks up the horn and blows it, and what comes out has coherence, order, and emotional resonance. She sees rhythm as the basis of all art. “Fang evokes the pleasure he takes in rescuing discarded objects, of gathering and assembling them. His work is not only about accumulating, for editing is important as well. It is also an on-going process that’s profoundly tied to his daily life. What he describes gets to the core of what assemblage as an artistic practice is about, for it is the putting together, the assembling that produces meaning.” Fang’s statement comes from Véronique Plesch, 2021, Maine Arts Journal.