Shannon’s initial love was oil painting, producing work with saturated hues and shimmering textures that enrich meaning beyond the subject matter. More recent work utilizes the versatility of mixed media with ink, acrylic and collage. Shannon explores social themes of power dynamics through her figurative work. Landscapes, inspired by the beauty of Coastal California and the Sierra Nevada mountains, contemplate the human response to the vastness of nature: spiritual awakening, awe, aloneness and transience. Her work has been shown in solo and group juried exhibitions throughout California and has won numerous awards and contests.

Influences for her work are the bold colors found in the Fauves and the enigmatic work of the Bay Area Figurative artists of the mid-20th Century. She relates to the vision of contemporary painters and photographers, many of them women, who incorporate irreverence and social satire in their art.  Shannon admires the artist Philip Guston, who aptly described the indescribable, the act of art making through painting:

“What is seen and called the picture is what remains—an evidence.
Even as one travels in painting towards a state of ‘unfreedom’ where only certain things can happen, unaccountably the unknown and free must appear…
In this sense, to paint is a possessing rather than a picturing.”

                           -Phillip Guston, from Statement in Twelve Americans, 1956