Jim Shaw (b.1952) artistic style is characterized by the use of a wide range of media and visual imagery. Since the 1970s, Shaw has mined the detritus of American culture, finding inspiration for his artworks in comic books, pulp novels, rock albums, protest posters, thrift store paintings, and advertisements.

Shaw has also consistently turned to his own life and, in particular, his unconscious, as a source of artistic creativity. Providing a blend of the personal, the commonplace, and the uncanny, Shaw’s works frequently place in dialogue images of friends, family members, world events, pop culture, and alternate realities. Often unfolding in long-term, narrative cycles, the works contain systems of cross-references and repetitions, which rework similar symbols and motifs, allowing a story-like thread to be perceived.