Shirley Saunders de Maio was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada where she enjoyed a wonderful childhood. While attending the University of Ottawa she worked, during the summers, as a canoeing instructor and river guide in the Northwest Territory and Yukon. Shirley then moved to Banff, Alberta where she learned the joys of skiing and hiking in that astonishing place. After moving to Whistler, British Columbia, she spent several years working on the Blackcomb Ski Patrol. In 1985 she moved to Clovis, New Mexico, where she lives with her husband and two sons.

In Clovis, she took her first drawing class and she was hooked.

Since then she has pursued art with passion, great enthusiasm and tremendous dedication. Shirley feels that underlying all art there must be lots of hard work, inspiration, and a strong desire to learn new methods. In some of her painting she uses an alla prima approach, and her palette ranges from bright vivid colors to muted tones.

Her ideas for paintings come from everything and everywhere. Her aspiration is that her paintings elicit a definite response and connects with the viewer. She feels her most successful paintings are those where the inherent beauty of common sights are revealed.

Shirley has studied under many capable and inspirational instructors including David Leffel, Ron Hicks, Kim English, Scott Burdick, John Budicin, Carolyn Anderson, HongNian Zhang and most recently with Guido Frick. She has received awards in local art competitions and has done commission work. In 2004, one of her paintings was selected and published in International Artist’s book People and Figures – Volume 1. Recently, she was honored when one of her paintings was chosen to be the 2005 Clovis Downtown Arts Festival Poster. Her paintings are in private collections in the US, Europe and in Canada.