Bio

Vanessa Sheldon grew up on a farm in the Adirondacks always drawing, creating or making something. But it wasn’t until she began studying visual art at the State University of New York at Potsdam that she began oil painting, her true passion. While in college, Vanessa was fortunate to have been able to study art abroad in Rome and Florence, Italy. Her senior year, she completed a semester internship where she studied Art Licensing and apprenticed under Julie Borden, whose work has been featured at the Oscars, with pop art icons such as Andy Warhol and Peter Max. Since then, Vanessa has exhibited in many art shows including, the International Art Expo NYC, where she caught the attention of Rick Barnett and Linda Mariano, the Licensing director for Thomas Kinkade who is an artist she has always admired. “Having these two business executives positively critique my art and explain why they loved it to a large audience of people at the Jacob Javitz Center was my proudest moment so far.” She was commissioned to create an original oil painting which helped raise funds for the All Hands On Deck campaign for the construction of the Finger Lakes Boating museum. Vanessa has since continued to paint, however in 2016, her idea for a public outdoor art installation honoring the bicentennial of the construction of the Erie Canal was chosen by the the NYS Canal Corporation, the Fairport Public Art Committee, and the Fairport Industrial Development Agency. Vanessa was commissioned by the organizations to build her winning idea of an interactive Analemmatic Sundial sculpture constructed out of salvaged canal stones from lock 58, one of several locks which had been removed when the canal was enlarged between 1836-1862. Vanessa is now recognized by the North American Sundial Registry #904. She has been asked and given Art lectures to the Rochester Suburban Art League and the Pittsford Art group. She has murals in Rhode Island, the upper East Side of Manhattan, the Awkwesasne Mohawk Indian Reservation and many private collectors own her work.