Shannon Ford is inspired by the magic of discovering beauty in chaos: “Walking up to a huge, empty canvas is pure joy, wondering what will appear and how.”
Shannon is a Canadian contemporary artist who lives and paints on Denman Island, where she and her sweetheart Denis raise Mangalarga Marchador horses and Highland cattle.
After graduating from the metalsmithing department of the Alberta College of Art, she created metal sculpture and jewellery for over 20 years while raising her sons. In 2003, she found her way back to painting professionally, and is now represented by Mountain Galleries at the Fairmont (Banff, Jasper, Whistler) and Galerie d’art Au P’tit Bonheur (La Malbaie, Québec).
An intuitive painter, she is intrigued by how a painting unfolds as she selects brushes and colours on the fly. She confides, “My biggest secret is to stop painting before the painting is finished,” and she finds strength in the way those early layers come together to capture the essence of her subject … just like life.
