Clarissa Shanahan, a creative professional who relocated to East Sussex, featured in an episode of Sky Arts’ Portrait Artist of the Year competition.
The episode marking her appearance represented the third instalment in the current series, with broadcast scheduled for October 21, 2026.
Ms Shanahan, a native of New York, brings considerable experience spanning three decades as a practicing creative.
Her professional journey encompasses fine art, decorative painting and an extensive period working within the New York film sector.
For almost two decades she served as a scenic and fine artist across numerous screen productions, contributing to projects including the feature film Pollock, where she recreated works by Lee Krasner, as well as assignments with HBO on Boardwalk Empire and Angels in America.
Beyond her screen work, she founded and operated her own enterprise specialising in decorative painting and gilding services within New York.
Concurrently, she maintained an active profile as a portraitist and figurative painter.
Her educational contributions extended across more than twenty-five years of instruction in painting, drawing, gilding and subjects connected to cinema.
She delivered courses and workshops at several major cultural institutions on both coasts, including facilities in Philadelphia and California.
In 2022 she departed the United States, undertaking an extended period of travel before choosing East Sussex as her residence.
Her present practice merges classical figurative techniques with symbolic and mythological content, cinematic storytelling and applications of gold leaf.
A recent body of work titled the Golden Bones series emerged from an unexpected origin: a shoulder injury and the resulting imagery of bone mending adorned with gold, drawing influence from the Japanese concept of kintsugi.
These compositions investigate themes of metamorphosis, strength and the aesthetic potential of repaired damage.
Ms Shanahan also created and illustrated Lenormand de Paris, released by publisher Königsfurt-Urania.
She maintains a studio in East Sussex where she continues producing canvases, undertaking portrait commissions and developing larger allegorical projects.
Her participation in Portrait Artist of the Year adds another dimension to a career notable for its breadth, one that has traversed New York production sets and gilded interiors before arriving at the contemporary studio setting, uniting technical skill, narrative craft and the enduring legacy of figurative representation.