More About Shayna

More About Shayna and Her Art

While living in Paris, France, from 1956 to 1958, she studied at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere. When time permitted, she roamed the halls of the Louvre. There, master artists like Matisse, Kandinsky, etc., influenced her with abstract art. Several years later, she did graduate work at the Corcoran School of Art, where she continued experimenting with abstract painting.

She said, "abstract art gave her complete personal freedom in terms of color and composition." Her work was primarily concerned with using color as the structural element building form and creating forces of action and reaction. See segment "Paintings In Her Thesis" later on, which was done in abstract.

In the 1980s, she became interested in painting and drawing mountains after visiting several National parks in the West. She visualized mountains as an abstract/impressionist style of painting and began a series of "Mountains In My Mind" of watercolor, silk screen, and brush and ink. Her work includes oils, acrylics, watercolors, charcoal drawings, woodcuts, painting with brush and ink, silk screens, and etchings.

Her instructors and mentors included among others: Benton Spruance, Will Barnett, Jerome Kaplan, Larry Day, William Woodward, Frank Wright, Leon Berkowitz, Clifford Chieffo, Douglas Teller, and Edward McGowen.

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