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Shawn McNulty (born 1975 in Saint Paul, Minnesota) is an American  contemporary artist, an abstract expressionist painter who has been influenced by Mark Rothko and  Jackson Pollock. His paintings are best described as abstract color fields and multi layered textured with thick surfaces in acrylic and pumice. McNulty works have featured in local and international exhibitions, included in public and private collections of notable corporate venues such as the Bloomington Art Center,  the Hopkins Center for  the Arts, the halls of the  Setai Fifth Avenue Hotel and Times Square in New York City. Bill Clinton, a Former President of the United States and Jesse Ventura, the 38th Governor of Minnesota own portraits made by McNulty.

Life
McNulty was born in 1975 in Saint Paul, Minnesota and graduated from the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University in 1997 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. John Seed, former Jean-Michel Basquiat assistant and art professor, described McNulty in an article as one of the early artists to use the World Wide Web as a representation platform. McNulty, a founding contributor of the Rosalux gallery,  was interested in art since his early childhood. From 1989 to 1993, Richard Doolittle, a Tartan High School art teacher influenced McNulty and introduced him to New York abstract expressionists such as Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. This interest expanded into a career where he received several distinctions and awards. In its Spring 2006 issue, The Southern Review chose McNulty as its featured visual artist. In September 2014, McNulty won the Award of Excellence from the Hopkins Center for the Arts at the Members’ Fall Juried Show Winners for his work titled Farmington (acrylic, collage, pumice). In its January 2016 issue, the journal Minnesota Monthly has featured McNulty's painting Condor in its “Best New Art” section. McNulty now lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Works
McNulty’s paintings appear in bold color and horizontal bands and are made up of abstract color fields that interplay with one another. He paints in acrylic and pumice creating layers of thick paint that yield textured surfaces shaped with large palette knives. For example in “Tycoon”, McNulty emphasizes texture by layering on acrylic paints, scraping the surfaces, applying color and carving again with palette knives to reveal the underlying architecture of each image. From the start of a session, this process is quite spontaneous and becomes more detailed as the composition emerges. Towards the end, McNulty places the canvas on the easel to create finer details on interesting and complex edges. His unique style explores relationships between artificial structures and his natural environment. One of his techniques consists of using a large joint knife attached to a shoe that he calls “shoe palette knife”. Many of his body work bear his signature component made of chopping motions with a palette knife to achieve near parallel lines.

Exhibitions

 * On its cover, Twin Cities Gallery Guide 2006, a widely distributed magazine in Minnesota, featured McNulty's painting titled Tributary.


 * The Mostra Internazionale Di Pittura 2014, a contemporary modern paintings exhibition in Matera, Italy, displayed two (ex. Watershed) of McNulty's paintings. The exhibition was curated by Pino Nicolleti. The exhibition featured in Italian national news.


 * On Times Square in New York City, McNulty's Stallion was broadcast on large digital screen in on June 18, 2012.


 * NUTS & BITS is an exhibition featuring Shawn McNulty and Daniel Buettner paintings at the Rosalux gallery in November 2015. The title of the exhibition was an analogy between the parts and layers in the artists' works and the architecture of an engine with various nuts and bolts.


 * McNulty's work has been displayed at the Hopkins Center for the Arts.


 * McNulty's contemporary art prints are displayed in the corridors of the Setai Fifth Avenue Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York. There are 206 framed signed archival pigment prints on paper.


 * An image McNulty's painting Shiver has been used in a 2011 national advertisement campaign for blue M&M's that appear in Entertainment Weekly (March 11), TV Guide (March 14), Us Weekly (March 28), Better H&G (May), Essence (May and July), In Touch (May 23), All You (July), and People (September 5).


 * Interpose was an exhibition at the Rosalux gallery with the contribution of Shawn McNulty in November 2013.


 * Archeology of Color was an exhibition of the works of Shawn McNulty and Silvana LaCreta Ravena at the Bloomington Art Center between January and February 2013.


 * Chaos Control was an exhibition in August 2014 at Rosalux Gallery.


 * In May 2015, the Minnetonka Center for the Arts spotlighted more than two dozen Minnesota artists including McNulty in a notable show.


 * In October 2015, McNulty was one of the 34 Minnesota artists whose artwork was commissioned by the Vikings to adorn the interior of the U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota.


 * Art in America curated by Julie Torres during Art Basel in Miami, Florida in December 2015, displayed some of McNulty's paintings.


 * Bill Clinton, Former US president received at the White House McNulty's painting Four Clinton.


 * Freedom Ventura is the title of McNulty's painting that was presented to the Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura in 2000 on behalf of the Human Rights group SPEAK.