Twelve Short Walks

The subjects for this portfolio of etchings were drawn from the artist’s stock of photographs of the Tile Hill estate where he grew up. As in all of Shaw’s work, there are no people visible and there is a strong sense of being on the edge of something unexplained. The ‘walks’ (a path leads into each print) invite the assumption that the artist, or the viewer, is the main character of a story or journey that might proceed by walking into the view, turning a corner, and continuing in the next print. There is a feeling of something hidden. Shaw thinks that the uncanny mood and sense of anxiety in the prints emanates from the unknown: ‘You don’t know what’s in the bushes, you don’t know what is round the corner…. I fear death considerably and I fear the ending of things, so I am anxious about things coming to an end... I am very clear in a lot of the images to always paint ways out.’ This acquisition continues the Fitzwilliam Museum’s policy of representing contemporary British art by collecting the best of British printmaking, particularly in the form of print portfolios.