Nahem Shoa
Uncompromising study is what has informed all of Shoa’s painting practices. From his early beginnings to today, he has always spent hundreds of hours trying to get a drawing or a painting to work. Shoa enjoys the process of understanding what he sees. If a painting is turning out good or badly, it is all the same; it’s the journey he finds interesting. Shoa says,” you have to be prepared to put everything you have into a painting and then a little more, in art only the best is good enough”.

“I wouldn’t be a painter if it wasn’t for the training I received from the artist Robert Lenkiiwicz” claims Shoa. There was no formal teaching going on in the six years he spent at art school which left him without the skills necessary to become a fine artist. Lenkiewicz who was an old family friend started training Shoa to paint when he was sixteen years old. His teaching was about the art of seeing, shape, colour, tone and relating them together as a complete whole. This knowledge of the craft of painting, gives Shoa an understanding, which sets him far apart from his contempories.

Winning the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in1992 was Shoa’s first major success, followed soon by many other awards and prizes. Throughout the decade Shoa has had his work exhibited in most of the major exhibition spaces in London. Lenkiewicz’s advised him, “ to avoid the big commercial galleries before your 30’s, as they destroy and corrupt young artists before they have their own artistic vision.”
In 2004/2005, Shoa had 3 major one- man shows, Youth Culture, Multi Culture and Giant heads, hosted by the Plymouth and Hartlepool City Art Galleries. Then in 2005, The Herbert, Coventry City Museum and Art gallery showed his,’ We Are Here’ exhibition, consisting of six-foot giant heads painted on canvases. All of these Exhibitions broke galleries existing attendance records.

After the recent success of shoa’s one man shows, Shoa is curating in June 2006 an exhibition called,’ uncompromising Study”, Where he is bringing together the works of 12 of the best observational painters working in Britain today. Work by Lucien Freud, Frank Auerbach, Robert Lenkiewicz and his own will be included.

In October 2006 The Bury City Art Gallery will be hosting a major one-man show of 25 Giant heads by Shoa, called ‘Facing Yourself’. Which will show paintings of people all of different ethnic backgrounds, who all see themselves as British. This will be the largest giant heads exhibition painted directly from the model to be staged anywhere in Britain and Europe.

Shoa’s mantra for making art is “You are only as good a your last painting”. You can see the fruits of this philosophy being carried out in all his paintings. It is impossible for anyone who loves art, to see an exhibition of Shoa’s work and not to leave feeing deeply inspired.