Shilo Ratner
Shilo Ratner’s work has been exhibited in museums such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Marietta/Cobb Museum of Art, Mystic Museum, Slater Memorial Museum.
Message
American artist Shilo Ratner grew up in the beach town of Brant Rock, MA. She launched herself into the arts in high school with various media before obtaining her degree in design in 2000 from Curry College in Milton, MA. She furthered her studies out east at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston as well as at Massachusetts College of Art. Her pursuit of a career in painting brought her out west to San Francisco where she earned her MFA in painting from the Academy of Art University.
Ratner’s life long pursuit has been for a deeper understanding of truths in spiritual traditions and the common thread that unites humanity. After earning her MFA, she traveled internationally with intention, intrigued by the symbols and practices of many religions. During her travels she visited Buddhist and Hindu temples in Malaysia and Indonesia. In a rural village in Brazil, she had a powerful shift in consciousness that inspired her series “From Within”. Always returning to contemporary life between these significant journeys has allowed her to express work that is about the “whole” experience vs only focusing on one or the other, as her approach embraces various spiritual and cultural experiences through a visual language rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area.
My artwork has garnered recognition through awards juried by esteemed figures such as Bay Area Figurative artist William Theophilus Brown (2009, San Francisco), Darby Cardonsky and Will Lustenader (2016, "The 105th Exhibition," Mystic Museum of Art, CT), Geaninne Gutierrez-Guimaraes, Associate Curator at the Guggenheim Museum (Best in Show, 2020), and Michael Hana (Best in Show, 2024). Additionally, jurors including Rita Gonzalez, Dore Ashton, Dean Sobel, and Donna Seagar have selected my paintings for exhibitions. My work has been shown in museums like the Museum of Contemporary Art, Marietta/Cobb Museum of Art, Mystic Museum of Art, and The Slater Memorial Museum, and held in numerous private, national, and international collections.
Currently, I live in New Haven, CT, and am an active practicing artist in the New York Metropolitan area.
Statement
In my art practice, I strive to create paintings that evoke an acute awareness and centered meditative state towards our daily surroundings using a tight geometric abstract visual language. Often using a horizon line to create a point of reference for the viewer, my paintings evolve with varied opaque and translucent layers of acrylic paint on canvas. While I create a time-based visual context for my paintings with sunrises and sunsets in color choices and titles, my hyper-realistic execution of stillness through a tight complex network of lines and forms indicates an almost suffocating state of our present day reality. I strive to present a perceptual consciousness through the spatial organization of architectural and natural landscapes alike with great attention to the foundation of my colors. While easily interpreted as geometric abstract landscape paintings, it is my hope that the intensity of my compositions demands an unorthodox attention from the viewer to invest in a centered and calm vision within the chaotic times of our present day.