Big Poppa, 2021

Artist Biography

Shaina Mccoy (b. 1993, Minneapolis, MN) is an artist living and working in Minneapolis, Minnesota. McCoy graduated from Minneapolis Community and Technical College with an AA in Fine Art in 2017. Working with richly hued oil paints, McCoy creates selectively-colored canvases that depict imagery drawn from photographs of family members and other intimates. Finding a formal balance between artists such as Kara Walker and David Hockney, McCoy builds faceless figures from thick, tactile layers of glossy paint; the resulting images are vivid and vibrant anonymous portraits, loaded with sentiment and mystery. McCoy’s work captures the ambiguous and familiar essence of memory, radiating both history and wonder.