Sedona Art - Southwestern Art & Landscape Painting in Sedona, AZ

Transform Your Space with Original, Vibrant, and Mesmerizing Landscapes

Elevate your environment with my original, vibrant, dynamic, and mesmerizing landscape paintings. My skies boast a distinctive, glowing quality—standing out with bold, swirling colors and textures instantly recognizable as my signature style.

Ignite Your Passion with Art That Resonates

Did you know art illuminates the same part of your brain as falling in love? It’s one of those awesome feelings! So why not treat yourself to the ultimate mood booster and invest in something that will bring you lifelong joy? Each original artwork is a piece of you that your family can cherish, holding onto all the good times.

Clark Sheppard (“Shep”) of Sedona Art Studios creates Vivid, Mystical artwork inspired by the magic and beauty of Sedona and the Southwest.

Clark Sheppard is an emerging Sedona artist who creates vibrant landscape paintings of the American Southwest. His unique style features fluorescent paints for a glowing 3-D effect and distinctive abstract luminous skies conveying extraordinary freedom and space.

My story is this. I grew up in Edison, N.J., in the ’50s & ’60s. My mother did some of everything for income, from being the 1st woman school bus driver in N.J. to selling real estate. My dad, Kip Sheppard, was a freelance commercial artist working in his studio out of our home. During that time, kids were seen and not heard. Dad never showed me how to draw, paint or sketch. I would look over his shoulder to see what he was working on, but he never explained his technique or anything like perspective or concepts.

My dad attended the Art Students League of New York. This is where he met Max Fleisher, also a League student. Max was the creator of the cartoon character “Betty Boop.” This was my dad’s first job as an artist, where he joined other artists in the drawing and animation of Betty Boop. Fleischer devised an improvement in animation through a combined projector and easel for tracing images from a live-action film. This device, known as the rotoscope.

How I started painting

My story is this. I’m often asked how I started painting. I wanted to discover if I had any artistic talent, so in 1990, at age 45, I enrolled in an adult evening art class at a local N.J. high school. I first chose to work with watercolor, thinking it would be the easiest medium. I mean, how hard can it be? Just mix some pigment with water, right? However, I soon discovered it was the most challenging medium.

My first mentor was a friend, Gordon Haas, a professional artist, who authored “No, I’m not staving.” I showed Gordon my first watercolor, and he encouraged me to continue painting. I asked Gordon, “What do I do next?” He replied, “The next time you want to paint something, bring me the reference, and I will show you how to lay it out.”

My second painting

I brought him “Christmas Eve” by Thomas McKnight, which I found on the back of Reader’s Digest. Gordon asked, do you want to put this into perspective, I replied, what’s perspective? That is how little I knew about drawing or painting. He then took me under his wing and gave me instructions when I needed them, which was most of the time.

McShep signature

McShep is how I sign my art. I was so inspired by McKnight’s use of color and light that I decided to pay homage to him by taking the “Mc” from McKnight and inserting it in front of my old U.S. Army nickname of “Shep.” To this day, I sign my art “McShep.”

Hobby

What started as curiosity turned into a hobby, and I’m grateful to have it. I’ve painted over 80 watercolor pieces from 1990 to 2004.

Sedona, here comes Artist Clark Sheppard

I retired and moved to Sedona in ’04 to sell my art, and I didn’t. To remain in Sedona, I decided to find a job and paint in my spare time. Unfortunately, I lost all interest in painting and gave it up for five years, from 2010 to 2015.

What started me painting again

In 2015 I did a psychic reading in person at the center for New Age here in Sedona with James Milanesa, TV’s Psychic Medium. During that reading, James told me three different times that I needed to start painting again. The first two times James said this, I just blew it off. When he said it the 3rd time, I said, James, why are you so insistent on telling me this? That’s when he told me he had a vision of my spirit guide, a Navajo Indian standing behind me nodding his head yes when he told me to start painting again.

Finding a Studio

At the time, I was the membership chairman of the Sedona Visual Artist Coalition. So, I emailed the membership list and am looking for a studio to paint in again. Twenty minutes later, I got a reply with an offer for a small space (about the size of a small walk-in closet,) and it had a window; yay! So, the first oil painting I did there was “Sailing Sedona’s Sky,” then “Creekside Cathedral.”

Warner Bros.

In 2016, I licensed the 1st oil painting I did, “Creekside Cathedral,” to Warner Bros. for their media series “Snatchers.” Then, in January 2019, the original of “Creekside Cathedral” was sold along with 11 other original artworks from Sedona Art Studios for the “American Contemporary Art Show” in Guangzhou, China; this body of work was a sold-out exhibition to private collectors.

A new beginning

Later, in 2019, an acrylic workshop at the Sedona Art Center taught by Claudia Hartley got me going again. I learned a new technique I’ve coined: Vivid Mystical Landscapes. My latest work has expansive feelings of space, freedom, and distinctively unique abstract patterned skies. Anyone who witnesses my art recognizes that it is mine. I now paint exclusively in acrylics.

Past accomplishments

Sheppard’s Southwest landscape artwork can be found in Sedona at the Village Gallery, Uptown Sedona, and the Sedona Artist Market Gallery. His Southwest Sedona art is also part of private and public collections internationally, including a piece licensed to Warner Bros. for their media series ‘Snatchers.’ In 2019, twelve original artworks from Sedona Art Studios were selected for the ‘American Contemporary Art Show’ in Guangzhou, China; the exhibition was sold out to private collectors.

Former President George W. Bush acquired Sheppard’s award-winning “Patriotic Longhorns.” from Artist Clark Sheppard for his private collection. His original “Goulding’s Stagecoach” watercolor hangs in the “Stagecoach” restaurant at Gouldings Lodge in Monument Valley, UT. His art has been featured in Southwest Art Magazine, Cowboys & Indians, American Cowboy, Texas Monthly, and True West magazines.

Life

It’s amazing how life unfolds when you don’t have an attachment to the outcome of anything. I’m grateful that I decided to hang in there with my art. Because the truth is once you realize that you will not be around forever, it is then that you choose to live life to the fullest… or not; the choice is yours. And this is MY STORY!