Shirra Benson
My work explores the relationship between landscape, memory, and material through gestural abstraction. Grounded in the natural environment of the Grey-Bruce region, I respond to weather, terrain, and seasonal change by building richly textured surfaces with palette knives, sgraffito, and other impasto techniques.
Rather than depicting the land directly, I work in conversation with it—allowing intuition, movement, and the physical act of painting to guide each composition. Layers of paint and mark-making reflect accumulated histories: geological, environmental, and personal. Dense, energetic passages sit beside quieter, open spaces, mirroring the varied tempo of the landscape itself.
Whether drawn from the escarpment’s pull, the open expanse of Georgian Bay, or the slow wearing of a field over time, each painting grows from a felt connection to place. The work carries movement, pressure, and release—traces of the land’s energy translated through the body and into paint—offering an entry point rather than a fixed narrative and inviting viewers to meet the work through their own experience.
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 2008 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, golf, 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. Shirra is a member of The Owen Sound Artists’ Co-op and her work is currently being shown here on a regular basis.
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