Hey there!
I’m Shasta.
And I express my complete love and adoration for plants, flowers, and nature, through the art of printmaking.
I love taking the time to freeze the beauty of nature in time.
All the art you’ll find here is created in my tiny home studio, and you’ll quickly discover that flowers are my biggest inspiration.
Creating art brings me peace. Drawing & carving offer a place to meditate on the beauty I see in the world. Stopping to draw something found in nature or a flower cut from my garden helps me to slow down and really appreciate their beauty.
Creating art pieces of these images is like bringing a memory to life. I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t have memories connected to nature. Whether It’s your grandmother’s favorite flower sparking a memory, the first bouquet you received from your true love or the wildflowers who revealed themselves to you on a nature hike. Humans and nature walk hand in hand in this life, and I love bringing the outdoors into your home and onto your walls in the form of hand-painted art pieces.
My journey with art
I consider myself an artistic adventurer at heart.
I’m a self-taught artist, googling and YouTubing my way through my artistic adventures, taking classes from any artist I can, and crafting the life I love in my small home studio. Printmaking is a fairly new medium for me, but art is not. I was a creative kid, spending my birthday money on pencil sets, oil pastels, and paper. I dove into any arts and crafts project I could get my hands on, and I credit this to a long line of creatives before me. My great-grandmother was a quilter, and my Grandmothers were seamstresses, embroidery artists, knitters, crocheters, and crafters. May aunt is an oil painter, and my Mother is a master seamstress and quilter, my father was a woodworker, and an artistic explorer like me, always curious and trying new things.
Being surrounded by all this creativity opened a window into a world where you can create the beauty you want to see come to life, so long as you have your two hands, a spark of imagination, and a little grit to stick with it when things don’t go as planned.
I still experience wonder every time I stumble upon a new medium or take a class and learn from another artist or craftsperson. I Have found my true love in printmaking, but at my core, I will always embrace learning and growth and love experiencing the joy and satisfaction of trying new things.
The first spark of Shasta Marie Designs ignited after moving to a new town. The people I knew were my boyfriend’s people, and I was now working from home, ALONE, all day. I needed something, anything that was mine and only mine. Naturally, I turned back to my roots, back to creativity. I started to play and create again, starting with hand-lettering, leading to painting signs, watercolor painting, and much more.
All of these artistic adventures led me to discover my current obsession… Printmaking! I’ve only scratched the surface of possibilities with these ancient hands-on techniques, and I am filled with excitement and curiosity, ready to grow and perfect these techniques for years to come.
What is Printmaking?
Printmaking is a form of art where the artist uses techniques such as engraving, etching, lithography, and screen printing to create an image or design on paper or other materials. The artist will create a design, either by drawing it by hand or using a printing plate, and then transfer the inked design to a substrate (paper or other material). This process can be repeated multiple times to create multiple prints of the same design. Printmaking is a great way for artists to make multiple copies of their artwork and explore different colors, textures, and layer options with their designs.
So far, my work has been mostly focused on Relief printing, otherwise known as block printing or Linocut printing. Printmaking techniques have been around for thousands of years. Some evidence shows it existed as early as the fifth century BC. Different forms have been found all over the world, its roots are based in India, China, and Japan.
Due to the long history, there are LOTS of different techniques.
Blocks can be carved from wood, linoleum, rubber, and many other materials. So far, I’ve only experimented with linoleum and rubber block carving.
Images printed with this method tend to be bold and graphic. Due to the hand carving, there may be less detail and more texture to the prints. It’s possible, when using a very small knife or carving gouge, to carve blocks with a huge amount of detail.
