Christine Shields was born in Northern California and grew up in thecompany of cowboys, hippies, punks, and freaks of all kinds.
Much of her childhood was spent in rural are as full of gold rush ghost towns, old farms, and haunted ranches. Escaping into the natural world of forest,creek and ocean she was shaped by these forces and in turn created her own world - planting the seeds for the work she makes today. This Other world is populated by creatures, spirits and trees, ghosts and the living, patterns and elements.
At the age of seventeen Christine moved to San Francisco where she was quickly absorbed into the underworld of music, art and questionable behaviour.
A new cast of characters would now influence her world.
A kind of post-punk Barbary Coast infiltrated the haunted backwater motif - building their tawdry glittering shacks amidst the goldrush flotsam.
This recipe resulted in participation in various band situations, and later an ongoing outpouring of comics, stories drawings and paintings.
In more recent times Christine has produced a body of work which includes a series of portraits - friends, musicians, artists and characters - as well as continuing investigation into the dream/otherworld. The portaits and imaginary worlds have been slowly overlapping. Ms. Shields also writes and illustrates books in conjunction with Booklyn, an organisation for book-arts in New York. She is also a singer and musician. Her first solo album will be released in mid 2008 on Evangeline Records.
See Also
