“I’m not interested in detailed realistic painting. Art is emotional for me. It isn’t about reality or making something look like a picture. It’s about the feelings behind the imagery.”

As a contemporary landscape painter, my work is a conscious play of mood, light and color, but as a naturalist raised and rooted in the diverse landscapes of western America, a painting means more than that to me. Each location is an encounter with the land, the trees, and the waters that have always given me a sense of connection and order. When a location intrigues and inspires me, I will paint the scene into a series using a range of keys or themes, experimenting and searching to learn more about the natural threads that tie the landscape together with complexity, subtlety and⎯more importantly⎯balance. I look for new ways to express spatial relationships and distance with layers of paint, brushwork, gradations, and diffusions of light. Hopefully, my study of the landscape will bring me somewhat closer to an honest translation⎯of both soul and land⎯as I push color and value into new compositions and continue a lifelong effort to communicate the emotional connection I feel with my environment.

Shanna was raised with a strong connection to the land and a deep sense of place. Her upbringing in the Wasatch Mountains of Northern Utah, as well as her experiences exploring the mountain ranges and deserts of the West, have heavily influenced her work. Art, music, and family have been constant sources of inspiration for Shanna and have helped shape her unique voice as a painter.

In her work, Shanna seeks to capture intimate imagery that resonates emotionally with her viewers, rather than depicting specific locations. Her paintings are characterized by their complexity, moodiness, and honesty, and are often described as transcendental by those who view them.

Shanna firmly believes that the world, in its current state of turbulence, desperately needs beauty in the form of art, love in the form of relationships, and spiritual uplift through personal connections. She feels that her simple and quiet landscapes serve this need for both herself and her collectors.

Select Publications and Media

International Artist, December/January 2024
Plein Air Magazine, October/November 2024
Plein Air Magazine, Dynamic Symmetry, August/Sept. 2024
Plein Air Magazine, Feature Article, March 2023
Carl Olson Artful Painter Podcast, 2021
Art Of The West, Feature March, 2020

Select Exhibitions & Awards

American Tonalist Society, Salmagundi Club, 2023
Catalina Island Conservancy Wild Side Exhibit and Sale, 2021, 2022
Oil Painters Of America, National Exhibition, Wildhorse Gallery 2022
Oil Painters Of America, Western Invitational, Illume Gallery 2020
American Ipressionist Society National Exhibit 2020, 2021

Affiliations

American Tonalist Society, Signature Member
Plein Air Painters Of Utah
California Art Club Out Of State Member
Oil Painters Of America, Signature Member
American Impressionist Society, Signature Member