Comfortable expressing his unique perception of the world using a palette of different mediums, David Sheldon is a painter, sculptor, illustrator, and author who has even dabbled in creating apps. Recognized by the Children’s Market as a creative, dependable, and professional artist with whom to work, he has illustrated more than seventy books and has written and illustrated several of his own titles as well. Sheldon breathes life into his books by drawing detailed scenes bursting with vivid colors and animated characters and filled with a contagious sense of joy and humor.
For his work in painting and sculpture, he received an Individual Artist Grant from the Maryland State Arts Council. Chosen for critically acclaimed group shows in the Washington, DC, area, Sheldon was also awarded Best of Show by Lee Fleming, art critic for the Washington Post, for his featured work in the Tributaries sculpture show at the Arlington Arts Center.
Growing up just outside of Washington, DC, Sheldon was blessed with an artistic eye. From a young age, he was enamored by the natural world and was constantly capturing it in drawings and paintings. The National Gallery of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Freer Gallery of Art, and the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History were beacons to him in the DC landscape, and he spent much of his youth “living in the Smithsonian museums.” The diorama department of the Smithsonian brought him on as an intern model maker.
Sheldon’s first painting exhibition took place in the Troyer Fitzpatrick Lassman Gallery in DC in 1998. In 2000, he turned his talents toward illustrating children’s books and moved to New York City, where his skills and passion made him a quick standout. Bent on developing a striking new body of work, his energy for Contemporary Art took him to North Carolina in 2006. An app game based on characters he created, the Freaky Flipsters, was launched in 2013.
Sheldon graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1985 and from the University of Maryland with a master of fine arts degree in 1990. He lives with his family in the Asheville area of western North Carolina and continues to broaden his range of skills with new techniques. |