Press Release - Martha & Richard Shaw
Richard Shaw - Bride and Steamship
Glazed porcelain with overglaze decals. 7 x 12 x 13 inches. 2003.
a duo exhibition by
Martha & Richard Shaw
Opening Reception
February 28, 2026 at 6pm
pt.2
1525b Webster St.
Oakland, CA
pt. 2 Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of work by Martha Shaw and Richard Shaw. Bringing together painting and ceramic sculpture, the exhibition considers not only two distinct artistic practices, but a shared life shaped by decades of devotion to art, observation, and one another.
Martha Shaw - Cup
Oil on canvas. 12.5 x 16.5 inches framed.
Martha and Richard Shaw have maintained parallel studio practices in Northern California, Martha working in oil painting and Richard in porcelain. Though their mediums differ, their works are united by a deep attentiveness to the ordinary. In this exhibition, these quiet subjects begin to speak to one another across material boundaries.
Martha Shaw’s paintings continue her exploration of intimate, recurring forms. Exterior houses sit alone on dim streets. A coastline glows under moonlight. Sailboats hover at the edge of visibility. Inside, a table set with a butter dish and knife; in one work, a cup balances improbably atop another, doubling itself like a quiet echo. Her palette remains restrained with soft grays, muted blues, earthen browns, yet the surfaces feel looser, atmospheric. Light dissolves edges. The banal becomes contemplative. Shaw paints not for drama, but for persistence: returning to the same motifs as a way of refining perception. The result is work that feels suspended between memory and presence.
In contrast, Richard Shaw’s ceramic sculptures are exuberant feats of illusion. Widely regarded as a master of trompe-l’oeil, Shaw casts porcelain objects, such as paint cans, pencils, tools, books, scraps of paper, and meticulously applies overglaze decals to replicate the textures and printed surfaces of the everyday world. Emerging from the Bay Area ceramic revolution of the late 1960s and shaped by the irreverence of West Coast Funk, Shaw developed a visual language that merges humor with technical skill.
The works included here by Richard span primarily the early 2000s, alongside a recent sculpture from 2023: a portrait of Martha at 81. Constructed from carefully arranged domestic objects, the piece becomes an homage, a playful yet tender meditation on time and partnership. In another sculpture, Shaw recreates a painter’s table complete with one of Martha’s own paintings resting among brushes and tubes of paint. Boats appear in several works, subtly echoing the maritime imagery in Martha’s canvases. These moments of crossover feel less like coincidence than conversation. If Martha’s paintings distill the world to its quiet essentials, Richard’s sculptures animate its clutter with wit and narrative charge.
At its heart, this exhibition is about sustained attention: to objects, to place, to repetition, and to each other. It reflects a lifelong commitment not only to making art, but to living alongside another artist.
Martha Shaw (b. 1943) is an artist based in Fairfax, California. Shaw received her BFA in Printmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute, though painting has been her primary art form since the late 1960’s. She has shown her work throughout Northern California. Shaw is also known for her collaborations in clay with her husband, ceramic artist Richard Shaw. Her diligent studio practice is grounded in a shared artistic mentality that spans three generations.
Richard Shaw (b.1941) emerged in the early 1960s as a key figure in the California Clay Movement and is widely recognized as one of the leading forces in the development of contemporary ceramics in the latter half of the twentieth century. A master of trompe-l’oeil sculpture, Shaw is known for his technically sophisticated porcelain works that transform commonplace objects into poetic and often humorous constructions. He received National Endowment for the Arts grants in 1970 and 1974, and his work is held in major national and international collections, including the Smithsonian, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Stedelijk Museum, and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. Shaw taught at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1966 to 1986 and at the University of California, Berkeley from 1987 to 2012.