SKEHAN

Pamela Skehan is a New Orleans-based artist and educator. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts with concentrations in painting, drawing, and ceramics from Ohio Wesleyan University and a Master of Arts in Teaching from University of New Orleans. Upon graduating college she spent two years teaching in Japan. In 2011 she moved to New Orleans and currently teaches at Metairie Park Country Day School. She established a home studio in Metairie, Louisiana in 2021 where she continues to practice painting, drawing, and sculpting.

Her recent work examines existential and quotidian facets of early motherhood. The paintings capture fleeting intersections of light, figure, and climate, exploring growth, balance, and vulnerability that comprise a burgeoning mother-daughter relationship. Bright colors and dynamic compositions convey the optimism and energy that accompany new life. High contrast, elongated shadows, and asymmetry cast a sinister quality of unrest, conveying the fear and exhaustion that lurk in the corners of early parenthood. Environmental references to Louisiana reflect anxieties around nesting in a sinking city, observing how the wet, spiky marsh creates a vulnerable shield, offering guardrails while yielding to nature. Barriers cut through planes in the form of fences, thicket, and painted lines. Manmade parameters attempt to establish order in a sprawling environment: manicured lawns, arrays of trees, sculpted levees, and potted plants. Expressive marks are used to convey chaos and conflict found in organic relationships between mother and child, people and place.