What is love expressed? What is it to tend the language of the heart? How do I share beauty? What is compassion in action? How do I touch suffering in myself, and in others? What is a life lived as art? These are the kinds of questions I ask myself every day. I am in a continual inquiry about who and what and how all this came to be and how we can participate in it with our very aliveness.

Painting for me is a devotional act, a spiritual practice, a prayer and a way to share my love. My creations are the bountiful harvest from a life lived in service to Beauty and the Divine. I feel like a tree whose branches offer fruits and flowers to the sky – that must be -because they do not belong to me. My creations are both my offering and my overflow.

When I create with inquiry and intention, I am able to open a door to the sacred space between worlds. That is where I paint from – straddling spirit and matter, unmanifest and manifest, broken dreams and dreams fulfilled, suffering and healing. It is here that I find I can synchronize my own heartbeat with that of the world. Where I am in some small way one with all that is, even just for a few moments.

I have long had a sense that almost every painting I make is for someone else – or created for some sacred space. While I am painting it – I think of that nameless person – and ideas come to me. Impulses that I add through symbol and shape and pattern that are somehow in the magic world of art, connecting to or attending to that person’s specific need. And when people find the painting that is theirs they often know and remark on which stroke, which symbol, which color, was clearly just for them. In this way I would say that I paint intuitively, and in many respects I am not in charge. I follow where the canvas and my muse lead me. My paintings seek to image a moment in time when all is well. A place where beauty exists and no harm exists. A moment when we feel as we wish we could more often, at peace with ourselves and the world – in love with one another and creation, and experiencing the miracle of life.

I owe deep gratitude and influence to my mentor Sue Sellars and my mother Caron McCloud who taught to believe that what I have to offer is important. Many of the artists who influenced me are a part of the symbolist movement: Mucha, Klimt, Chagall, Kahlo, Redon, Cassat, and others who hold the space of beauty and original voice and image. It has been said, and so I like to think, that my work is a part of a contemporary symbolist movement.

I experience my artist life as a privilege. I have owned art galleries for over 13 years – and represented and coached hundreds of women artists. I have authored several books, and am currently working on a volume of my poetry, a book of fiction and sharing of my legendary life. I find so much joy and self reflection in the creative process, I cannot help but share it with others so that they can honor their own divine spark through creativity. I often paint in my nightgown in the morning at my home studio in my dining room which I call the Red Thread Café, where I have tea with the muse and my rascally kitty Santiago from the Black Madonna. And when I paint, I feel moments of pure bliss. I think of life as a legend being written, not just a story that happens to me. And my legend is that I am an artist, that life can be art when we choose for it to be, and that life is a great adventure.

May love be at the center of all choices.

Shiloh Sophia

 Shiloh Sophia McCloud

Curriculum Vitae & Creative Projects

Artist. Publisher. Teacher. Consultant. Entrepreneur.

Gallery Experience

  • 2012 – Now Shiloh Sophia Gallery, Healdsburg California
  • 2008-2010 Electric Rose Gallery, Healdsburg, California
  • 2004-2010 Wisdom House Gallery, Mendocino, California
  • 1999-2004 Color of Woman Gallery, California, Washington, Colorado
  • Revenues of over 2.5 million dollars of art, prints, books, cards
  • Artwork and wholesale product line represented in 300 stores/galleries/venues

 

Co-Creations and Projects Founded

  • 2000 Flaming Heart Publishing, founded wholesale publishing company with over 100 product styles including prints, fine art prints, cards and journals
  • 2003 Founded Cosmic Cowgirls, LLC with 25 founding Mamas – a woman and girl owned membership organization focusing on education, publishing, e-learning, events
  • 2004 Holy Counsel of Women – Ministry, First Congregational Church of Oakland
  • Represented, marketed, coached and launched hundreds of women artists and exhibits
  • 2004 Holy Counsel of Women – Ministry, First Congregational Church of Oakland

 

Art Alliance Projects:

Formed project alliances and events with women/children centered non-profits including: La Casa de las Madres, America’s Angel, Glide Memorial Church, Women Defending Ourselves and Parsa (Organization working with widows and children in Afghanistan), First Congregational Church of Oakland, The Women’s Recovery Association, Marin Abused Women’s Service, YWCA of Sonoma County, Native Women’s Wellness Circles, Tribal Taniff of Bakersfield, Daughters of Tradition, Delores Huerta Foundation, Belladonna Sanctuary, Mendocino Environmental Center, Bay Area Business Women, Girls Inc., International Museum of Women, Women’s United Nations Network, Women’s Initiative,  San Francisco Women’s Building, National Organization of Women, Margaret Okari Children’s Foundation

 

Training and Education

  • Two year mentorship in painting and clay with artist and illustrator Sue Hoya Sellars
  • Icon Painting Apprenticeship to Pavel Tikhimov, famous Russian iconographer
  • Academy of Art, San Francisco, Two years 1992-1994
  • College of Marin, Kentwood, Two years 1990-1992
  • Dominican College, One year 1989
  • Holy Orders – 2 Years St. Mary’s – Ordained Reverend

 

Art Showings and Projects

  • Participated in over 100 juried shows at galleries and art exhibits across U.S.
  • Produced, marketed and exhibited at over 75 art, music and educational events, concerts, exhibits, schools, conferences and women’s circles.
  • The Virgin Show – Galleria Tonantzin Guest artist for the 2004, 11th Annual Virgin Art Show, San Juan Bautista, Ca
  • “Sacred Body Sacred Woman”, New College of California MA exhibition, Berkeley, Ca
  • “Angels, Women & Heroes”, First Congregational Church, 6 month exhibit Oakland, Ca
  • “Center for Attitudinal Healing” – Marianne Williamson event exhibition, Oakland, Ca
  •  “Dancing With The Tree of Life”, Belladonna Sanctuary, Berkeley, CA, 3 years
  • “Praises for the World” with musician Jennifer Berezan, 2 years, Oakland, Ca
  • “Source of Empowerment”  California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, Ca
  • “Violence Against Women ” Northern California Women’s Caucus
  • Nexus Gallery Berkeley, CA and California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco
  • Celebration of Craftswomen – Exhibitor 5 years, San Francisco Women’s Building
  • DONA – Doulas of North America Art exhibitor in annual conferences
  •  “Glide’s Wall of Peace” Commissioned by to provide a “platform for creative response” to the war.  Hundreds from Glide Memorial participated custom six-piece mural.
  • “The Healing” Developed V-Day theme marketing and product line for fund-raising events for domestic violence shelters, Los Angeles ,California
  • Women Defending Ourselves –“Wonder of Women” campaign, Oakland, Ca
  • Produced three events for Alice Walker including: Hard Time Require Furious Dancing

 

Teaching Experience and Curriculum

  • Class instruction in watercolor, oil, acrylic, drawing, sumi calligraphy, journaling, design, project and program development, marketing, creating your artistic identity through one-on-one classes, group workshops, weekend retreats, online courses
  • Faith & Feminism Conference, Wisdom’s Urgent Cry – Presenter/Teacher
  • First Congregational Church of Oakland, CASpeaker series, 3 years
  • New College of California, Women’s Spirituality Department, MA Program New College of California, Creative Inquiry, MFA Program, Teacher 4 years
  • Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Palo Alto, Teacher – MA program 3 years
  • Mountain Song Montessori schools, Mendocino, CA – teaching art to children – 4 years
  • Books and curriculum used at Pine Grove Treatment Center for women, Hattiesburg, MI
  • Book and curriculum approved in 2008 for Toledo Hospital Cancer Recovery Program
  • New College of California MFA Creative Inquiry Program – Teacher,  MFA
  • Curriculum Development Tribal Taniff, Native Women’s Wellness Circles,
  • Provided counseling and pastoral services for over ten years to women and teenage girls
  • Self-expression through, after school program for Sonoma High School
  • Circle of Compassion – One year long teen Girl’s Rights of Passage, Mendocino County
  • 2002 “Ecstasy of Sound” co-produced workshop with Jennifer Berezan
  • 2000 “Journaling the Soul” with Rose Offner, Journal to the Soul at Readers Bookstore
  • 2003 “Transformation of the Sole” workshop with La Casa de las Madres, San Francisco,
  • 2002 “Mother-Daughter Workshop” Women to Women Institute, Sonoma, Ca
  • 2003 “Palace of The Soul” – Summer for Girls with Artist Elizabeth Gibbons
  • 2009 Collaborated with Mary MacDonald and Sue Sellars on e-learning university.
  • Trained advocate for victims of domestic violence & sexual assault, Port Townsend, Wa
  • Partnerships in Parenting Course for foster kids, Santa Rosa, CAPublishing ProjectsIndependently published five illustrated journals for women’s creative development.  They are featured in 90% of the women’s bookstores in the United States;
  • She Moves To Her Own Rhythm – A Guided Exploration
  • Heart Wings – A Book About Real Friendship
  • She Dances Between The Worlds – Exploring the Language of the Heart
  • Her Evolution – Women’s workbook for personal transformation.
  • Heart of the Visionary – A Workbook for Entrepreneurial Women

Bio

Shiloh Sophia McCloud has dedicated the past seventeen years of her life to the study and practice of art as a spiritual discipline as well as to helping equip women with the tools and understanding to develop their own creative potential. Shiloh’s artwork is dedicated to providing healing images of women and family. As a leader in helping to build a transformational art movement, Shiloh lives and teaches a philosophy that all art forms are tools for individual, social and spiritual transformation. Thousands of women have deepened in their creative practice through Shiloh’s illustrated Color of Woman journals and her workshops. Shiloh is the founder of Cosmic Cowgirls Ink, LLC a woman and girl owned university publishing company, magazine and membership community that now produces five Color of Woman journals with dozens more on the way. Shiloh is also the founder of Palm of Her Hand, (501c3 pending) which collaborates with artists. poets, musicians to create events and products. Shiloh’s paintings are internationally collected and her product line is represented at galleries and fine shops throughout the Unites States.