Hello
Samantha Shields is a Calgary-based painter whose work centers on contemporary portraiture. For the past five years she has developed a practice that explores punchy colour, pattern, texture, and printmaking to create portraits that feel vivid, tactile, and emotionally engaging. Working across depictions of both people and animals, Shields is interested in pushing portraiture beyond straightforward likeness toward something more playful and visually dynamic.
Recently, her practice has expanded into landscape painting, inspired by her years living in Calgary and exploring its surroundings. This new body of work marks an ongoing commitment to experimentation and creative challenge, and reflects her excitement about exploring unfamiliar subject matter.
Shields holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Master of Fine Arts from Maine College of Art and Design. Originally from Massachusetts, she served in the U.S. Air Force and worked as a designer before relocating to Calgary in 2021. She is a member of the Calgary Painters Society and teaches painting workshops at Raw Canvas.
My Story
I grew up in Massachusetts with a Chilean mother and an American father, and from as early as I can remember I was always drawing. I tried sports, but quit every single one of them. Art was the thing that stuck. Portraiture pulled me in early, and I spent years making large graphite drawings of people from photographs, especially images where someone let their guard down and showed an unpolished side of themselves. Those moments felt honest and human, and I loved translating them onto paper.
Eventually I wanted a new challenge and turned to painting so I could explore color. That decision reshaped my practice and ultimately led me to pursue an MFA, where I had the rare gift of time to immerse myself in painting and experimentation. During those same years I was also becoming a mother. I now have two young daughters who keep life busy, joyful, and unpredictable, and who constantly remind me why making time for creative work matters.
Painting has always been my way of studying the world. People fascinate and confound me, so portraiture became a natural language for understanding them. After moving to Calgary with my husband, I found myself equally captivated by the landscape. The mountains, the badlands, and the vast openness of the West are so different from where I grew up. Exploring this environment by hiking, traveling, reading westerns, and learning local history, has sparked a growing desire to turn that same attentive gaze toward nature. My newest work is an extension of that curiosity: a way of getting to know my adopted home through paint.