Gary W. Shaw Original Floral on Paper — Signed, Framed

An original work on paper by Gary W. Shaw, built on a deliberate compositional crescendo: three nested rectangles, axially symmetric, each rendering the same stylized tropical bloom through a different palette. The outer field is grayscale, the middle zone deep cobalt and powder blue, the innermost rectangle vivid orange-red with yellow-tipped stamens and white pistil filaments arcing downward in a basket pattern. The temperature gradient pulls the eye inward — coldest to hottest, most muted to most saturated — with the inner zone reserved as the only place where the bloom appears at full chromatic resolution.

The flower itself reads as a stylized Pride of Barbados or related Caribbean tropical: fan-shaped striated petals, long arching stamens, theatrical staging. Shaw treats the bloom as graphic icon rather than botanical specimen, repeated and overlapped across the picture plane as decorative field. Signed lower right in graphite. Professionally framed and double-matted behind glass in a silver-tone stepped wood frame.

CONDITION

Good. Image area presents bright and clean as viewed through the glass, with no visible foxing, fading, or surface disturbance. Frame and double-mat presentation are intact with light handling wear consistent with age.

DIMENSIONS / SPECIFICATIONS

• Overall (framed): 33.25" × 28" × 1"
• Sight (image area): 22" × 17.5"
• Medium: Original work on paper
• Framing: Professionally framed and double-matted behind glass; silver-tone stepped wood frame
• Signature: Signed lower right in graphite — "Gary W. Shaw"
• Provenance: Ex-collection, owner of Robin Hutchins Gallery, Maplewood, NJ

ABOUT THE ARTIST — GARY W. SHAW

Gary W. Shaw is an American painter and printmaker working in a graphic, Pop-influenced botanical idiom — flat color fields, fine ink-line detail in stamens and petal structure, and theatrical staging of singular floral subjects against architectural or tonal grounds. His subject range moves from tropical Caribbean flora to cultivated garden blooms, with stylization that draws as much from Japanese woodblock and Art Nouveau as from late-twentieth-century Pop botanical traditions.

Shaw entered the gallery circuit at the start of the 1980s with a coast-to-coast exhibition record across three major US art markets. His Premier Exhibition opened in 1980 at Gingerbread Square Gallery in Key West, Florida — the island's oldest private gallery, founded in 1974 on Upper Duval Street and recognized for its tropical and multicultural artist roster. He subsequently exhibited at The Richard Mann Gallery, 665 North La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles, on the historic La Cienega gallery row that anchored the city's commercial art scene through the late twentieth century. A further exhibition followed at Price-Robins Gallery in Washington D.C.

His exhibition posters from this period — featuring banana flowers and pendant orchids (Key West), iris in architectural arches (D.C.), and calla lilies on patterned grounds (Los Angeles) — establish the visual vocabulary that runs through his original works on paper: the close-up bloom rendered as graphic icon, with the stylization holding the eye where botanical illustration would defer to nature.