Shirra Benson
My work explores the dynamic relationship between landscape, memory, and material through gestural abstraction. Rooted in the natural environment of the Grey-Bruce region, I translate elemental forms, shifting weather, and seasonal transitions into richly textured surfaces built with palette knives, sgraffito, and other impasto techniques.
Rather than depict the land literally, I respond to it—allowing process, intuition, and physical engagement with the medium to shape each composition. The resulting works suggest layered histories: geological, environmental, and personal. Areas of dense, frenetic mark-making contrast with open fields of calm, echoing the rhythms of the landscape itself.
Whether inspired by a windswept escarpment, the wide stillness of Georgian Bay, or the slow erosion of a field, each painting invites the viewer to find their own way into it—interpreting form and gesture through the lens of their own experience
~ Shirra
Painting Plein Air for the first time in the Owen Sound 2023 Artwalk Competition. I won 1st Place!
(above) Hiking the Niagara Escarpment
Background
Shirra Benson is a Canadian landscape painter based in Owen Sound, Ontario. She graduated from Georgian College’s Fine Arts program in 2007 and has since developed a painting practice deeply rooted in her emotional connection to the natural world. After stepping away from art to pursue a career in equestrian show jumping, Shirra returned to painting following the transformative experience of motherhood.
Inspired by the rugged beauty of the Niagara Escarpment, the Bruce Trail, and the ever-changing moods of Georgian Bay, Shirra finds creative fuel in time spent outdoors. Hiking is her greatest passion, though she also enjoys cross-country skiing, cycling, and exploring the land year-round. These outdoor adventures allow her to reconnect with herself and the rhythms of nature—moments she captures through photography or plein air sketches and later brings to life in her studio.
Her work explores a range of techniques, including impasto, wet-on-wet, and gestural brushwork, often using thick layers of oil paint to evoke the movement and energy of the landscape. Driven by a deep reverence for the earth, Shirra’s paintings aim to honour the spirit of place and the quiet strength found in nature.
Her work has been exhibited in Owen Sound and throughout surrounding communities, including Meaford, Thornbury, Collingwood, Southampton, and Stratford.
Nádúr
“Nature, constitution of the material world. Constitution of any particular thing; disposition, temper, mind; the nature, constitution or fitness of things; the sinful or depraved nature of man in a spiritual sense.”
— Quoted from: A Dictionary of the Gaelic Language
“Describing my own artwork is the most challenging part of being an artist… I feel deeply and release my energies onto the canvas. My style is developing and I am always playing and experimenting. I like to call this paint doodling if there is such a thing.”
“There is a distinct beauty in human-made artwork. Something that computers cannot ever replicate. My most recent abstract process is unplanned and intuitive in nature, that could never become a computer-generated work of art”
— Shirra
Contact
shirra@nadurartstudio.com
(647) 893-3096
Owen Sound River District, ON Canada