Shana Rappel

I was born in Casablanca, Marruecos to a Spaniard mother and an American father.
My parents moved to Paris when I was only 18 months old.
Being surrounded by French art, I felt strongly attracted to it since early age. I wanted to pursue a career in Arts, but my parents wanted me to have a more traditional career, so I decided to study Psychology. Later on, that artistic part of me flourished and I started my studies in Gemology-which is the study of precious stones and paint on porcelain. At this point, all my professional activities were focused on the creation of art pieces based on stones and porcelain. I produced a collection of porcelain with semi-precious stones in it. This first collection was rapidly and successfully commercialized in Japan.

After this first experience, my art work was enriched with new techniques so I decided to do a second collection. My second collection was based on decoration objects, this time; the materials that I used were precious metals such as gold and platinum. These art pieces were very creative and attractive in France, so they were presented and commercialized in many French galleries.

My art pieces kept on inspiring me to produce more and more, the influence of renowned artists made me open my horizons to a new direction. I decided to go back to school to study drawing. I went to the Academie d’Art Anca Sonia for two years. The Academie d’Art was located in the Southern part of France.

There, I learned basic drawing techniques. Then, ready with new ideas,

I started painting on canvas in 2000. Soon my first canvas was exposed in many private collections in Paris, London, Berlin and New York. From 2002 to 2004 my paintings acquired a style inspired by Chagall and Kandisky.
They were colorful and sensual paintings.

My artistic style was oriented toward the abstract expressionism style or paintings that expressed actions of existential elements of the artist’s personality. Most of them were inspired by Russian painters with varied themes based on my artistic beliefs.

I exhibited my art work in several cities in France such as Cannes, St. Tropez, Juan Les Pins, Mougins, and others. My paintings were part of collections in Paris, London, Milan, and New York. This first art era was called Abstract Expressionism that lasted four years.

I arrived in Miami in 2005 where I took a six -month break to observe the Miamian culture. This diverse and colorful culture got connected with my soul and spirit, and soon in 2006 I started painting again. This influence, the Pop Art, and the free expression concept reinforced my style producing a more contemporary art always related to my artistic belief which is the abstract expressionism.
Abstract expressionists based their art pieces in their beliefs which are the man’s inner

emotions, turmoil, and feelings. We, as part of being an expressionist, work deeply
with the fundamental aspects of the painting process which are the gestures, colors, forms, and textures to show their expressive and symbolic potential.
Why a wink to the Pop Art? Pop art is a form of art that depicts

objects or scenes from everyday life and uses techniques of commercial art and popular illustrations. It is a style derived and characterized by big replicas of items from mass culture. I decided to represent portraits of three revolutionary figures in different themes and eras, such as Mao, the Che, and Warhol simply because I wanted to reinterpret and express artistically these figures my way. Once again, I like to mix themes freely and I choose the subjects that I deal with in my paintings based on my daily mood and not by a permanent leitmotiv that involves repeating the same canvas over and over again
by simply changing the colors. Despite the diversity on my styles, I want to share many experiences and beliefs.