Shaun McCracken’s paintings explore hard-edged geometries by incorporating line, colour, shape, texture, divisions, and their interactions, to create intimately scaled art works that are contained, self-sufficient and unique visual experiences. Color is the basis of McCracken’s work, with a specific color defining the palette for a day’s painting session. McCracken notes, “Each day a new colour is picked and usually it is a color that contradicts, compliments or clashes with what I used the day before. Color is built up over many layers of paint – and I look for interesting juxtapositions even within a single color area - a pink over a green or an orange over a purple for example. So color is one of the first issues I think about when I start painting - and is one of the defining elements that tells me when a painting is finished.”

In the early stages of McCracken’s work, the geometric shapes contained within his works are free formed and somewhat arbitrary. As the painting progresses, these shapes and patterns become carefully considered. However, there is no pre-planning or preliminary drawing that is utilized to create his compositions.