Shannon Gilbert was born in Petersburg, Virginia during an intense snowstorm in 1980. Her tumultuous upbringing shifted her from place to place, creating a deep sense of wanderlust and a fascination with the changing landscape. Shannon lived in an artist colony in Portland, Oregon until she returned to Richmond in 2005, later attending Virginia Commonwealth University, studying Painting and Printmaking. She is active in the local arts community, a friend to fellow artists, and an Art Handler at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. She has won awards internationally for her work and attended residencies at Post Contemporary- CAC Woodside in Troy, NY as well as the Art Students League of New York at Vytlacil.
Shannon creates lyrical impressionistic landscapes, aesthetically inspired by Japanese blockprinting, Turkish Ebru, and graffiti. Her work explores the environment at a particular moment, exuberantly freezing the forms that represent that moment in time, observing the degradation of land, gentrification, decline, developments and demolitions. Her urbanscapes are inspired by the enigmatic, devoid of human activity, reflecting on our contemporary estrangement brought about by dormitory style suburbs and commuter cities. Earthy pigments like oxides, ochre and cobalt, mined from the land, transformed into paint and translated back into landscape, explore the cycles between man and nature, deterioration, preservation and renewal. Shannon currently lives and works in Richmond, Virginia with frequent trips to the Hudson Valley of New York.