Statement

My art form is EXPRESSIONISM and I started painting three years ago after finding a teacher Robert Lafayette Mitchell who painted energy and motion. My goal is to create joy, energy and healthy emotions in my art form. I have focused on capturing the joy of creating and playing music and dance. Art and dance are universal languages all over the world among man and other species. My art is bold, bright and high energy.

I am using the proceeds from the sale of my art to address children’s education and health issues world wide. Our family has been for three generations teachers, preachers and doctors/healers. At the age of 3 my parents told me that GOD will bring you anything. So I began to pray nightly for red shoes, expecting them to be delivered during the night to my bedside and every morning when I woke up, I would look to see if GOD had brought me the red shoes during the night. I include a pair of red shoes in the art if possible and I collect red shoes to remind me to connect spiritually with the source of all of my good and inspiration.

My first painting was of my father’s band. My father’s mother was a widow in Mississippi in the 1930s and someone White taught my father to play 2-3 musical instruments and he taught himself the rest. He wanted to attend college but there was no money. He went to Mississippi Institute College and told them that he had no money but would teach music and start a band for the college in exchange for tuition. They allowed him to pay for his college in that manner. To earn pocket money, he played with his quartet on the weekends for weddings, bar mitzvahs and dances; his instrument was the trumpet. My father later after several degrees completed his doctorate in educational administration and taught here at TSU for 20+ years. Music was always important in our household and I had 12 years of piano training and oboe. Both of my parents were the first in their families to attend college and then graduate school.

Currently, I am building a super web site for natural healing remedies called the Health Tip Connection, the health/healing tips are based on the latest medical research. I am a psychiatric nurse full time and I teach nursing students part-time. Another current project is a book I have written on Face Lift by Exercise, look 10 years younger in 10 weeks. I am a graduate of many schools [Vanderbilt, TSU (Biology and Nursing), Tulane, University of Alabama and I attended Harvard and Tufts].

I am the mother of a gifted scientist, dancer, play writer and artist who has her own company , EthnoExpresso. EthnoExpresso is interactive dance refreshment during a larger conference, she get 1,000 people to get up out of their seats to do African Dance.

Joan Shannon, RN, BSN. MS, MPH, (Ph.D)