Mary Alice Shaker

I am an artist living in Richmond, Virginia, getting close to retiring from Richmond Public Schools where I have been teaching art for the past 6 years. Before that, for twenty years, I owned a gallery and frame shop in Williamsburg, Virginia. I am recently single, having been married for almost 40 years. I have four children and four grandchildren. My ambition is to be working at my art full time within the next year. My specialty over the years has been portraiture and I have painted individual portraits of the seniors at my school, Richmond Community High, each year for the past four years. I will post some of the portraits on these pages. I am a native of Niles, Ohio, where I was raised the eldest of eight children of Judge Mitchell and Mary K. Shaker. I am of mixed ethnicity, Lebanese and Italian; my grandparents were immigrants. At an early age I displayed art ability and was encouraged by my parents to pursue it as a career. I obtained my undergraduate degree in 1968 from Catholic University and went on to earn my MA in Art Education from Ohio State in 1970. I have taught art at all levels from kindergarten through college, but dream of using my creativity to produce a series of works which will be considered important enough to create an enduring artistic legacy for myself. To this end I put myself "out there" along with so many others in the hope that I will be able to visually communicate with others in the way I know best.