Shirley Kaneda

Artist, professor, and writer Shirley Kaneda is known for her abstract oil paintings. The post-modernist paintings created by Kaneda evoke emotion through color and shape.

Born in 1951 in Tokyo, Japan to Korean parents, Kaneda spoke English, Japanese, and Korean growing up. Kaneda moved from Japan to the United States in 1970 and attended the Parsons School of Design in New York City where she earned her Bachelors of Art in 1976. The artist taught at Virginia Commonwealth University from 1999-2001, then at Claremont Graduate University from 2001 to 2003. Since 2003, Kaneda has been a professor at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.

Her bright, abstract works are lively yet controlled, filled with surprise and ambiguity. Speaking about her work, Kaneda said, “I use my work to metaphorically promote such non heroic themes as the decorative, beauty, fluidity, diversity and so on.” The artist’s work has been displayed throughout the United States, Europe and Australia.

The piece in the Escalette Collection of Art adheres to the artist’s abstract style. Here we see blocks of color which are overlapped by shapes of all different colors. This untitled work is not meant to represent a physical object, instead a feeling or an idea.

To learn more about the artist, visit her website here.