About the Artist

Susan Lane Shields’ fascination with the colors and design of nature formed while growing up in California's High Sierra as the daughter of an award winning impressionist painter. “My mom painted plein air,” she says. “I used to romp around in the sage brush by the Owens River and watch her.”

After studying at U.C. San Diego, U.C. Santa Cruz, and Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Susan worked as a graphic designer, art teacher, and landscape designer in Los Angeles, raising three children, “and too many pets!” Susan is a third generation Californian and has spent most of her life there, but she and her husband have also lived on San Juan Island, Washington, and on a farm in northern Virginia, where she exhibited her work in several galleries.

Susan's current medium is pastel. “They are bright, immediate, and refractive—great at capturing the subtle iridescence on flower petals, the soft hazes in cloud and sky. I try to tap into that mystical thing in nature, translate that mysterious feeling of awe beauty stirs up.”

“Nature, I believe, is trying to communicate. That beauty makes me feel something, deeply. I know a work is finished when I walk into my studio, look at it, and experience the same feeling I had when I saw nature’s original masterpiece. To share that is my mission.”

Susan lives in Oceanside California's Fire Mountain area with her husband Karl.