by SHERRY SMITHER

AFTER A NEIGHBOUR shared Amy Shackleton’s video of her artwork online, it went viral and attracted more than one million views.

“In 2011, I created a time-lapse video to document the creation of Terraced City, says Shackleton. “I made the video to accompany my solo exhibition in Toronto and posted it on YouTube,” she says about one of her early “brushless” paintings.

The response took the artist by surprise. Her inbox was flooded. Shackleton appeared on CTV’s Canada AM, received requests for interviews from as far as Poland, and sold a number of paintings, including the piece featured in the video.

Shackleton – a gravity artist – uses squeeze bottles and gravity to create her unique artwork. Using liquid paint, she drips, pours and layers as she rotates the canvas creating organic artwork like: Through The Trees (Toronto + California), Cornerstone (Toronto + Vancouver) and her recent triptych, Greenhouse Effect (Colorado + New York) that sold to a UK collector before she completed the piece.

Shackleton developed this process over a period of three years; first by dripping paint, and using paint brushes and tape for concrete, architectural elements. As the artist became more experienced directing the flow of paint, her technique took another turn.

“It was then I realized with more planning, calculating and layering I could eliminate the use of a paintbrush altogether,” explains Shackleton. “Now, I have more control than ever. My work evolves with each piece I create, and I am still discovering new things.” Shackleton has a love of nature and urban landscapes that is evident in the subjects she captures: tall buildings, waterfalls and trees. “My work references opposing forces – the technique (control vs. spontaneity) and the subject matter (architecture vs. nature),” says the artist that graduated from Toronto’s York University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

Through her paintings, Shackleton hopes to encourage people to work with nature rather than against it. “As climate change continues and extreme weather events become more frequent, questions about our future – be they utopian or apocalyptic – are made more urgent.”

Her exhibition, Light Show was inspired by natural and artificial light experiences she had during trips to California, New York and Toronto. She featured sunlight, for example, because of its significance in sustainable building projects.

The environmentally-focused artist has travelled across Canada to every province and territory; she walked on sea ice in Nunavut and hiked through the mountains, coast to coast, in search of inspiration for her largest painting, a 53-foot-long panorama of Canada called, The Great Canadian LEEDscape. LEED, an acronym for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is an international rating system that encourages sustainable buildings.

“This painting combines the great Canadian landscape with LEED certified buildings: those that incorporate green roofs, rain gardens, solar energy, geothermal heating/cooling, or urban agriculture,” she explains.