Nikki Shannon

I love to paint. I get lost in it. Creating textured backgrounds is mesmerizing. Often for me the background is way more entertaining than the foreground! But enough about painting, what about the weirdo wielding the brush?!?

When I paint, I love listening to music. Sometimes it is something quiet and spiritual, so as to ground me and remind me that I’m a channel for the creative energy to flow through. Sometimes it is dance and techno music, my way of saying forget the flow, I’m going full throttle here! Oh, and movies with good music are fun to listen to while painting. I’ve listened to Gladiator, Far and Away and Moulin Rouge far more times than I’ve watched them. And how can I leave out “Once More with Feeling,” the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode? Good painting to Buffy.

Did I mention that I’m a geek? As if the Buffy reference didn’t give it away. I love sci-fi, the internet, and technology. I’ve even dabbled in comic books. I build websites, run blogs, and spend way too much time online (Cough choke – Facebook – Ahem – Twitter). I love movies, and I harbor an unnatural affection for bad action movies (case in point: Jason Statham). I also enjoy Muppets, Tom and Jerry and anything animated that I can watch with the kids.

Speaking of, I’m a stay at home Mom too. I have one daughter and one son. They are the coolest. Right now my son is still too young for school, and I’m hoping I have even more time for artwork when he heads off to school. Got me a husband as well. He’s a drummer and a brainiac. And believe it or not, he’s even more of a geek than me. Two words: Star Wars. Two more words: action figures. Yes, our children are doomed.

I do have a lot of titles. One of my favorites, aside from Artist, Mommy and Mrs., is that of Certified LifeLine Practitioner. What that means is that I’m trained in the LifeLine technique, which is a alternative, holistic healing technique. That is a whole ‘nother* about page, and you can read more about it here. Sufficed to say, I’m a big fan of energy work, or as I like to say: I love me some Woo-Woo!

There is also the wine thing. Heaven knows I’ve painted my fair share of wine bottles. Emptied quite a few too. I love a good bottle of red… shoot, I even like a mediocre bottle! Oh, what the heck, I’ve even learned to appreciate some white wines too, CRAZY! I enjoy the wine culture when it is light-hearted and fun-loving and not so much pretentious and snooty. So what if I don’t know my Cab from my Shiraz (which is a really funny phrase if you say it with the Australian pronunciation)… just pour me a glass of the grape and let us have a large time. And so it is.

There’s a little insight into the artist currently known as Nikki Shannon. In closing, here’s a very incomplete of things that make me giddy:

Harry Potter Books and Movies
Will Smith
Tennessee Titans Football
Almost any song remixed
Hugh Jackman
NCAA March Madness
The work of Joss Whedon
Pants that are too long
Nathan Fillion
So You Think You Can Dance
Sychronicities
Christian Bale
The work of JJ Abrams
Tivo
Wordpress
Anything in the Terminator oeuvre
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Spring time when the grills get fired up
Patio lounging
Playing Volleyball
Celtic/Bluegrass/Ragtime/Swing Music
Facebook
Anything published by Hay House
Energy Work

*Believe it or not, I majored in Journalism. I simply decided to write this page like I talk, just to prove how talented I am when it comes to slaughtering the good English language. Despite the fact that the phrases “whole ‘nother,” “Got me a husband” and “I love me some woo-woo” are horribly un J-school, they are just things I say with great regularity. My apologies to the Chicago Manual of Style.