I was born Shirley Thorsteinson, and grew up near Gimli on the West shore of Lake Winnipeg, the area called "new Iceland".

At a very early age I was impressed by the oil paintings I saw in my grandfather's home, and dreamed that someday I would be an "Oil Painter". Those paintings now hang in my home.

At 17, I moved to Winnipeg and trained as a Medical Laboratory Technologist. I worked there for a few years, then relocated to Edmonton in 1963, where I worked in Microbiology at the Provincial Laboratory of Public Health.

I married my husband Sol, a Faculty of Education professor, in 1973. He is from the same area in Manitoba, and we share an Icelandic heritage. We have two sons: Grant, now a doctor and resident in Pathology at U of A; and Ryan who has a degree in Cell Biology from the U of A and a diploma in Theater Arts from Grant MacEwan College. Both are violinist; Ryan is a pianist also and a singer working mostly as a musical director.

While working at the U of A, and later when my boys were in school,. I completed a Bachelor of Science degree, as a part time student, just to prove I could, since I had not worked in a laboratory since 1975.

It was during a course in Geology when I was required to make drawings of the fossils that we were studying, that I realized that I could draw a bit!

This spurred me to take courses through the U of A extension with such teachers as Ihor Dmytruk, Harry Savage, Jerry Heine, Gisela Fildsberg and more.

An illness which saps my strength has kept me back a bit, but I am encouraged and inspired by the EAC meetings and shows, and I am now concentrating on improving my ability with watercolors. As a Gemini, I have to keep trying new things!

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Lake Beauvert, Jasper
16x20
oil on canvas

Athabasca River Dunes
16x20
oil on canvas