Shannen Muhl

Shannen Muhl is an interdisciplinary artist based in Glasgow Scotland, whose work is characterized by a unique balance between compositional structure and emotive intuition. Drawing inspiration from a deeply personal history of trauma, depression and anxiety, Shannen's artistry is marked by a profound sensitivity to the human condition. A passionate explorer of formalism, Shannen employs technical methods, theories of color and composition, and a wide range of mediums to create immersive works that challenge conventional modes of representation. By harnessing the power of form, color, and sound, Shannen invites viewers into a world of contemplation, where the aesthetic and the psychological intersect in thought-provoking ways.

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Inner, Outer, Center,Self

An investigation into what I term the "animalistic default mode," a primal, instinctual drive to retreat into a compacted, fetal form during moments of extremity. This response, triggered by extreme trauma, comfort, or pleasure, reflects the body’s oldest survival programming. It recalls the embryonic origins of the human form, but within this context, the fetal gesture is not about regression, it is the seed of transformation.

The series unfolds as a progression, tracing the evolution of the self in the aftermath of rupture. The early works embody the moment of compression: the immediate, reflexive retreat inward. Forms are dense, folded, suspended in chromatic voids that echo the disorientation of trauma. As the series develops, the figures begin to shift and evolve. Compression gives way to subtle motion: ripples, torsion, asymmetry, but the figure evolves into a more recognizable form, hinting at internal restructuring. A new psychic form is assembling itself in the dark.

By the final works, the self is no longer simply surviving, but actively reconstituting. The compressed body becomes a new being entirely. Instinct and abstraction collide to form something new and more whole. Unbalanced horizon lines introduce a sense of pulse, of becoming. The paintings do not resolve neatly, but they gesture toward a threshold where a new self forms.

Wόn

183cm x 152cm oil on canvas 2024
The psychological self at its most raw and unformed. A being freshly cast into existence by trauma. The moment just after impact, when a new self begins to form not by choice, but by necessity. The Ὠόν here is not gentle or generative, it is a pressure vessel, a closed space where fragmented instinct, emotion, and survival reflex begin to reorganize into identity. This is the pre-articulated psyche, suspended in abstraction, radically responding to the violence of becoming. Exploring compressed, ambiguous forms as expressions of internal rupture, and positions the work within a conceptual framework where formation is not natural but reactive, a response to rupture, a shell grown around fracture. A beginning from chaos.

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Phanes En Gignesthai

183cm x 152cm oil on canvas 2024
The psychic moment where the self, ruptured by trauma and compressed under survival, begins to reassemble. It exists between collapse and coherence. The form begins to fracture and form. The wet clay begins its new shape. Referencing Phanes, the first Orphic god born from the cosmic egg, the initial surge of becoming; a state where identity is not yet structured, but is actively forming. Phanes is not rendered here as a divine being, but as a psychic event: the violent, luminous birth of self-awareness in the aftermath of obliteration. The figure pulses with tension. The edges waver. The surface breaks. A presence, once buried, begins to press outward. It is not yet formed, but it is visible. This painting lives in that flickering threshold. The moment the self begins to remember it exists. It doesn’t depict clarity or healing, but the raw act of reformation: unstable, radiant, and irrevocable. Phanes En Gignesthai is the first unstable breath of a self that refuses to stay buried.

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Chrysou Genesis

183cm x 152cm oil on canvas 2025
The mentally adolescent self, an unstable yet radiant stage charged with finding new identity from emotional extremes, and a hunger for meaning. This is the spark of self awareness, where the mind changes rapidly and the psyche begins reaching outward. It reflects the intensity of becoming creative, volatile, and idealistic; mirroring the mythic birth of Apollo as both beautiful and dangerously powerful from the moment of arrival. The title, Chrysou Genesis: “Golden Origin” a reference to the mythic birth of Apollo, the radiant god of prophecy, music, and order. Here, Apollo is not a perfected symbol of beauty, but a metaphor for the self striving toward coherence, longing for balance, and searching for truth in the chaos of its own history. This is the articulation of a self that remembers its collapse, carries its shadow, and still dares to form something radiant. It is the moment the psyche stops trembling in the dark and starts building itself again.

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Glaukopis Emanation

183cm x 152cm oil on canvas 2025
The beginning of self maturing, where cognitive discipline, and strategy take precedence. It reflects the integration of wisdom through a lived experience, critical thinking, and new emotional complexity. This stage is about clarity of purpose, self regulation, and navigating the world with intention. Glaukopis Emanation marks the moment when the self begins to see with clarity. Drawing from the epithet of Athena, the bright-eyed goddess of wisdom, this painting captures the emergence of the cognitive self; the part that analyzes, strategizes, and begins to direct its own reconstruction. This is not a return to wholeness, but the beginning of agency. The mind is still marked by compression, but it holds itself with awareness. The instinct driven being of earlier works has evolved, now it observes, calculates, and begins to shape its own becoming. Now becoming a focused projection of selfhood rather than an uncontrolled burst. Visually, the form carries structure, tension, and a sense of readiness. It radiates not chaos, but control.

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Thanatotokia

183cm x 152cm oil on canvas 2025
A moment of extreme psychic tension; a threshold between death and the birth of a new self. Drawing from the mythic birth of Hades, god of the underworld. The self is not gently transformed, but dragged into becoming through the internal collapse of the old. It captures the final stage of psychic compression, when the old self has nearly died but has not yet released the new form. Visually, the body is curled, veined, and clenched a deathly shell of flesh containing a smoldering coal. The figure doesn’t represent new life in the traditional sense but the emergence of a consciousness forged in the aftermath of trauma, a self that could only exist because the former one didn’t survive. The figure is a tomb and a womb simultaneously. It gives context to the flesh as both container and evidence; the skin of the old self wrapped tightly around the genesis of the next. The myth of Hades doesn’t end in joy or closure; it hovers in the trauma of transition, the brutality of transformation, and the sacred violence of becoming something that has never existed in one’s self before.

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Amalgamation of Flesh

In Amalgamation of Flesh I & II, Shannen Muhl investigates the bizarre and often unsettling nature of the human form. Muhl describes the body as "these strange bags of flesh we inhabit, whose very essence becomes even more peculiar through what we do with them." This duality, simultaneously intimate and alien, forms the foundation of their exploration into themes of the uncanny, corporeal detachment, and the human desire for physical entanglement.

Drawing from the uncanny valley effect, Muhl paints fragmented, human-like body parts caught in moments of visceral entwinement. The forms writhe, push, and penetrate one another in ways that obscure their identity as human, abstracting them to a point where recognition teeters on the edge of ambiguity. This intentional distortion immerses the viewer in a space where the familiar becomes foreign, evoking both unease and fascination.

Through their use of abstraction, Muhl challenges the viewer to confront the inherent strangeness of the human body and its capacity for both connection and disconnection. The pieces provoke a tension between repulsion and allure, pulling the audience into an intricate exploration of flesh, form, and the complex relationships we hold with our own corporeality.