Description
‘Is This the Place?’ by Shanna Van Maurik
Artist: Shanna Van Maurik
Title: ‘Is This the Place?’
Medium: Oil on panel
Dimensions: 40″ x 40″ x 1.5″
Framing: Unframed – Ready to hang
Year of Creation: 2024
Artwork Will Ship From: Canada
About the Artwork:
This painting draws from the artist’s memories of childhood summers camping with family in an old trailer in rural Ontario, Canada. Her days were spent taking long walks through the forest to pick berries, drawing, making jewelry, and listening to her Oma’s stories about growing up in Holland during the war. These experiences, full of simple magic, deeply influenced her as an artist.
Van Maurik reflects on how memories evolve—how they feel both close and distant, as if they’ve aged with her. She didn’t set out to make this painting melancholic, but it naturally took on that feeling, becoming a doorway to those summer days and the parts of life that are hard to hold onto. Painted over a year, with both planning and spontaneity, the piece captures her sense of being both rooted in and far from the past, where familiar places shift with time. It’s an exploration of how memories change shape, offering a bittersweet view of nostalgia, home, and change.
About the Artist:
(Artist Bio)
Toronto-based artist Shanna Van Maurik (b. 1989) is known for her vibrant oil paintings that capture dreamlike, haunting scenes from the natural world. Her work vividly explores nostalgia and the delicate tension between whimsy and melancholy, blending soft gradients and meticulous textures to create spaces where reality and dark fairy tales intersect.