Emily Ludwig Shaffer

Introduction

“AS YOU KNOW, THE WOMEN IN MOST OF MY PAINTINGS DON’T HAVE MOUTHS. FOR ME, THAT COMES FROM THIS DESIRE TO
HAVE THEM BE ABSTRACTED, MORE GENERIC, AND SYMBOLIC WOMEN’S FORMS AS OPPOSED TO SPECIFIC FACES.”

– EMILY LUDWIG SHAFFER IN CONVERSATION W/ KALTBLUT MAGAZINE, 2022

Emily Ludwig Shaffer (b. 1988 in San Francisco, US) lives and works in New York. She received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2010 and a MFA from Columbia University in 2017. Shaffer’s paintings and drawings explore the uncanny worlds that arise between idealized forms and environments and the frames through which we experience them. In the worlds she creates, day and night sometimes exist at the same time, perspective falters and the only figures who appear are stone statues of solid women. Shaffer sees these imaginary domestic spaces and gardens as theoretical explorations of architecture, light, time, control and color, and as homages to the spaces women build, create and occupy.

Download Artist's CV

Works