SHANNON CANNINGS: Distortions

March 19 through May 3, 2026

 

Shannon Cannings, born in Pittsburgh, PA, works and lives in Lubbock, TX, where she is currently an Assistant Professor of Practice in Drawing at Texas Tech University. She received her BFA in Painting from Tyler School of Art, Elkins Park, PA and her MFA in Painting from Syracuse, Syracuse, NY.

 

Since then, her work has been exhibited throughout Texas and nationally in art institutions such as:

Museum of the Southwest, Midland, TX

South Plains College, Levelland, TX

University of Texas at Tyler, Tyler, TX

Tyler Museum of Art, Tyler, TX

The Center for Contemporary Arts, Abilene, TX

Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts (LHUCA), Lubbock, TX

Midwestern State University, Wichita Falls, Texas

Buddy Holly Center, Lubbock, TX

Contemporary Art Museum of Plainview, Plainview, TX

Crowley Theater Annex, Marfa, TX

Laredo Community College, Laredo, TX

Texas Tech Museum, Lubbock, TX

Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, TX

Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, NM

Art Depot, Lubbock, TX

International Cultural Center, Lubbock, TX

Llano Estacado Institute for the Performing Arts, Lubbock, TX

2011 Texas Biennial, Austin, TX

Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center, Auburn, NY

including cities such as Miami, Florida; Baltimore, Maryland; Providence, Rhode Island; Pittsburgh, PA; Cincinnati, Ohio; Chicago, IL, and in several cities throughout New York.

 

She has been a Hunting Prize Finalist four times, and in 2019 was awarded first place in CASPfest, juried by Christina Rees. Cannings work has been featured in several publications such as: Galveston County Daily News, Glasstire, Arts and Culture Texas, D Magazine, Dallas Observer, Houston Press, Bowerbird, View From my Window by book creator Barbara Duriau, New American Paintings (No. 72), and most recently in 2022, Loaded: Guns in Contemporary Art by Suzanne Ramljak, curator and art historian.

 

Shannon Cannings lives and works in Lubbock, Texas, where she teaches art at Texas Tech University. Cannings’ expertly painted, hyper-realistic toy guns explore the artificial nature of American consumerism, creating a visual hybrid between opposing themes of beauty and kitsch, innocence and violence, nostalgia, and regret. 

 

ARTIST STATEMENT:

“For several years, I have had an eloquent, comprehensive artist statement explaining my works’ connections to Americana, gun culture, and nostalgia.  The mostly central toy gun imagery was used as a lure to ignite conversation, a mirror, to make the viewer confront their own ideas. The subjects of my paintings and the text of the artist statement were perfectly in step with one another.  However, as my work has changed and become more experimental and broader in scope, it has become harder to write about it.

 

As the news cycles have gotten louder, more aggressive, and complicated, my paintings echoed them with mylar distortions. The guns were replaced by nerf bullets, targets, razzle-dazzle, and camouflage.  In my last solo exhibition, there were no guns, mainly abstracted mylar distortions, and a few introductions of slightly deflated mylar balloons. 

 

And that leads me to where I am now, in a place of transition, an imprecise place. The balloons are becoming lenses through which I am seeing our collective jumbled views. They become portraits of a questioning, struggling society.  I don’t want to make reactionary work about specific events.  And I don’t want my work to wallow or celebrate hopelessness. I want to make work that recognizes the distortion, accepts that our system is flawed, and finds beauty in our communal work in progress.”

 

Website: https://www.shannoncannings.com/

Anya Tish Gallery Houston: http://www.anyatishgallery.com/

Cris Worley Fine Arts Dallas: http://www.crisworley.com/

Charles Adams Gallery Lubbock: http://www.charlesadamsgallery.com/

 

Have questions, email info@acmidland.org or call 432-687-1149.