Shirley McKay Britsch - Spring Poppies

Original Oil Painting.  12"x12"

Shirley was born in New York and grew up in Chicago where she was encouraged at an early age to love art. Her mother often took her to visit the Art Institute of Chicago. She had a wonderful art teacher who taught her throughout grade school. Her father, an inventor in the field of radio and television, was an excellent photographer who let her assist him in developing pictures in his darkroom. Standing on a stool, she would carefully dip the paper into the developer, watching the pictures appear as if by magic.

She has won numerous awards for her paintings, including first prize for acrylics at the Dixie Invitational and Equitable Life Show, and Best of Show at the Utah Watercolor Shows. Her painting of a baby merlin was shown at the prestigious international show "Birds in Art" where it sold to a collector within the first fifteen minutes of the opening.

Shirley loves the beauty of nature and finds it spiritually uplifting and healing to be painting outside. She strives to create a luminous glow within her paintings and sees light as a spiritual concept and major focus of her art. "I want viewers not only to see the painting, but to feel like they are seeing into the painting.”