Hi, I’m Shen Marie, a self‑taught portrait artist. My work is grounded in my Black roots and the stories I grew up with.  

 

I started creating around age seven, sketching and sculpting scenes from my culture. Art became the way I could express myself and lift up the people around me. As a teenager I fell in love with drawing leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko and others. That’s when I knew I wanted my life to stay connected to this work.  

 

Life took some hard turns and for a long season I couldn’t even bring pencil to paper. Eventually I poured my creativity into graphic design and photography, opening my own studio and running that business for years. I was grateful for it, but I knew it wasn’t the final stop.  

 

Living in Ontario, the pull back to painting became too strong to ignore. I believe some people are simply born artists. I went back to learning the way I always have – through practice, trial and error, and studying the work of artists like Jean‑Michel Basquiat, Jacob Lawrence and Kehinde Wiley.  

 

Since then I’ve focused on portrait painting, grown a community online, and my work now lives in homes across Canada and beyond. I work primarily in acrylics from my home studio in Ontario.  

 

My goal is simple: to use art to honour where we come from and to inspire anyone who sees themselves in these faces.