Sally Sheppard
Sally thinks she was born with a love of fibre. She remembers insisting that her mother teach her to knit and sew at age four. By age 10 she was making her own clothes and as a teenager she made custom clothing to order.
She was strongly influenced by her mother, aunts and grandmother, all of whom were highly accomplished in the needle arts. Her late mother, a graduate of the Ontario College of Art, was a silversmith, painter and a fibre artist as well as being an art teacher. For more than 50 years, she was Sally’s teacher and mentor in art and particularly fibre art.
Sally was born and raised in Ontario and moved to the Yukon in 2003 with her husband Peter Sullivan. She retired from a 35-year career in the private and public sectors in 2008 and is fulfilling her lifelong ambition to be a full-time fibre artist.
Nature is her main inspiration, particularly the textures of plants, grasses and trees, and rock shapes and patterns. She also tries to capture the stunning panoramas of the Yukon. The incredible beauty of the Dempster Highway is a recurring inspiration because it offers sweeping vistas and the exquisite, miniature plants of the tundra at the same time. She spends as much of her time as possible in the Yukon outdoors through three seasons; during the winter she can be found in her studio.
Sally’s works frequently in hand embroidery, freestyle machine embroidery, surface design and embellishment. Thread painting is one of her favourite techniques.
Her work is in private collections in Yukon, British Columbia and Ontario. She is an active volunteer in the Yukon arts community, sitting on four arts-related boards.