Shona McAndrew: Secret Garden

CHART is pleased to present Secret Garden, a solo exhibition of new work by Shona McAndrew. McAndrew will debut a dynamic installation of paintings and watercolors, with an opening reception on Friday April 11^th, from 6–8 p.m. The exhibition will remain on view through May 24^th, 2025. 

In Secret Garden, McAndrew presents a significant evolution in her formal and conceptual practice. Her early work situated women within intimate indoor spaces, whose domestic environments served as a haven from external judgements and societal pressure. This afforded her subjects moments of private vulnerability and unguarded existence. In her new body of work, McAndrew dismantles these architectural boundaries, venturing into a fantasy realm. Each painting is set within a bucolic utopia which provides a sanctuary from our contemporary reality. Her subjects are unabashedly engaged with nature, in lush landscapes and amongst animated wildlife.  

Amid lush overgrown fields of flora and fauna, McAndrew delves into how environments—both physical and psychological—shape expressions of safety, vulnerability, and freedom. Her women migrate from domestic confines to boundless natural realms. Each composition unfolds within an Arcadian dimension where characters and nature harmoniously coexist, creating an intertwined world of fantasy and expressions of an ideal. They bathe with bears, roll in flowerbeds, climb trees with snakes and masturbate in fields of wildflowers with birds on their shoulder.

“I wanted my imagined world to feel indulgent. I wanted it to come purely from my imagination, to paint a fantasy world that feels perfect,” McAndrew reflects on her created paradise. “It’s perfect only because it doesn’t exist. It can’t exist in reality and that felt liberating for the work, for me and for the ladies I paint.” She invites viewers to temporarily inhabit a space where female bodies and experiences exist without constraint.

About the Artist
Shona McAndrew (b. 1990, Paris, FR) lives and works in Philadelphia. She holds an MFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BA in Psychology and Painting from Brandeis University. She has had solo exhibitions at Art Omi, Ghent, NY (2021), The Abroms-Engel Institute of the Visual Arts at UAB, Birmingham, AL (2021), the Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia, PA (2020); CHART, New York, NY (2019, 2021, 2023); and Spring/Break Art Show, New York, NY (2019). She has also exhibited in group shows at The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY; Nassima Landau, Tel Aviv, IL; the New York Academy of Art, New York, NY; wallspaceplease, Dubai, UAE; Newchild Gallery, Antwerp, BE; Kunstraum Potsdam, Potsdam, DE; Lyles & King, New York, NY, Taymour Grahne Projects, London, UK; Stems Gallery, Brussels, BE; Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami, FL; Allouche Benias Gallery, Athens, GR; and Museum of Sex, New York, NY. McAndrew's work is in the collection of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, Florida; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut; and Paul Creative Arts Center at University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire.