Leena Shah Mixed Media Artist Portfolio

Leena Shah (1971) -- Mixed Media

Artist Profile

Artist Leena Shah

Leena was born and raised in Kenya and is a self-taught artist. Although she couldn't study art in her early age she kept it as a hobby by regularly taking part in competitions. She studied Art in High School where she won the best upcoming Artist award and since then she has explored and experimented with a range of mediums and has worked with different artists at the French Cultural Center in Nairobi.

In 1995 she joined, Ismana, a design company in Nairobi where she worked as a fabric designer for 4 years. She created designs for T-shirts and fabrics used for upholstery. In 1998 the One-Off contemporary art gallery in Nairobi represented her. She took part in group exhibitions organized by the gallery in 1998 and 1999. It was her first big success in selling her work at home and overseas.

In 2000 she got married and moved to New York to join her husband. She joined the Art Students League of New York and has since painted in the studio with Phillip Sherrod, William Scharf and Bruce Dorfman. In 2001 she got an honorable mention at the League's group exhibition.

From March 2002 to 2003 she had been represented by Gallery Soho in Palm Desert, California. Her extensive travels across the US inspired a new dimension to her paintings.

In December 2002, she moved to London. She joined the Hampstead School of Art in 2003 to experiment printmaking, participated in three group exhibitions organized by the School and carried on painting in her own time. In February 2004 she had a solo exhibition at First Edition Gallery in Canary Wharf, which was a huge success for her and received media coverage.

In 2004 she took the opportunity to do a contemporary oil painting course with renowned artist and curator, Bettina Reiber at Central St Martins College of Art. She joined Cor Blimey Art studios in Deptford and had exhibitions every quarter until February 2006.

She travelled to Australia twice from London - she was so touched by the Aboriginal Art and Landscape that it inspired her to embark on a new series of paintings. In April 2006 she moved to Johannesburg, South Africa and having had her first child in 2007, she began painting again in 2009. Leena's work was featured by the Brown Spice boutique at the Green Pavilion at Decorex in Johannesburg in 2009.

Her passion for travel also opened her up to different types of art and her appreciation of expressing one's self through art grew. She visited museums, galleries, cultural markets and workshops everywhere she went.

Her Paintings are in Private collections in Nairobi, London, Switzerland, Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Australia.

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