About
Peter Shaw is an American artist and fifth-generation Californian San Franciscan, and has been a practicing studio artist and environmental artist since the late 1960s. Shaw studied and graduated in Art Practice & Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley in 1973, and has established an extensive body of work in four art mediums: black-and-white 35mm film photography, abstract painting, environmental art, and new-media art.
Shaw has lived and worked in California in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Berkeley, Oakland, Sonoma County, and Los Angeles.
Quantum Painting & internet-as-vehicle
In Spring 2026 Shaw premiered on-line and on-wall a cumulative abstract new-media art presentation: Quantum-Painting 2025/2026 / 1000 California Cloud 1990/2007/2026 in San Francisco at Art-Room 2026, in support of California environmental non-profits. Quantum-Painting 2026 at QuantumPainting.Art is also presented as internet-as-vehicle art — a form Shaw established in the 1990s with COLOR2020 and in the early 2000s with 1000 California Cloud.
During the dawn of the digital age, as an abstract painter Shaw chose new-media image-print as his print-making medium, creating an extensive series of works on paper including 9-100Color 1990/2026 and establishing a color system and proprietary digital color files. COLOR2020.Art is an ongoing internet-as-vehicle presentation of Shaw’s pure-concept new-media abstract art.
Quantum-Painting 2026 is a cumulative new-media art presentation as a shared global experience, developed from traditional studio art-making with extensive immersion in digital products beginning at the dawn of the digital age, while continuing analogue practice in abstract painting and environmental art. Shaw has worked and collaborated with creatives across art, technology, and science in new-media work stretching the possibility of art in the 21st century.
Community & gallery
Shaw collaborates with St. John Coltrane Arts on sacred-music ceremony and youth music education. He is a collaborating artist with Anglim-Trimble Gallery, San Francisco, California.