Amy Shackleton grew up in Bowmanville, Ontario, and knew from kindergarten that she wanted to be an artist. She spent her free time sketching and teaching herself how to draw. Her creativity was recognized early by teachers and peers, earning her a Grade 8 Art Award and later the Art Award for highest standing upon graduating high school. In 2004, she was accepted to all three schools she applied to—OCAD, Queen’s University, and York University—but it was the art studios at York that ultimately won her over. She completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts there in 2008.

After graduation, Shackleton moved to Queen & Spadina and immersed herself in Toronto’s downtown art scene. Within a year of balancing an office job with evening painting sessions, she secured representation with a commercial gallery on Queen Street West. 

Painting full time, she developed a practice rooted in urban landscapes and the idea of nature reclaiming the city. As these themes evolved, so did her process. She began searching for a way to introduce spontaneity and natural movement into her work, gradually shifting away from traditional brushwork in favour of paint drips. Using squeeze bottles—sourced from a local kitchen supply store—and rotating the canvas, she learned to guide each drip with gravity, allowing paint to flow while maintaining a sense of control.

After three years of learning to work with gravity, Shackleton created her first fully brushless painting in 2011 and documented the process in a YouTube video. When a neighbour shared it on Reddit, the video quickly went viral, surpassing one million views and drawing international attention. She was featured in New York Magazine and The Huffington Post and appeared live on CTV’s Canada AM. The moment marked a turning point in her career and launched her reputation as the “Gravity Artist.”

Over the following decade, Shackleton continued to push and refine this innovative technique. She relocated to a larger home studio in Oshawa and exhibited her work in commercial and public galleries across North America and internationally. Her 53-foot-long panoramic painting of Canada, The Great Canadian LEEDscape, was inspired by all 13 provinces and territories and featured in a four-venue travelling exhibition. Her paintings found homes in dozens of private collections worldwide, as well as in public and corporate collections, including the Museum of Dufferin, the Colart Collection, and Facebook Canada. During this time, she also received multiple Ontario Arts Council grants and earned First Prize awards from juries at institutions such as the McMichael Canadian Art Collection and Station Gallery.

In 2020, Shackleton was invited by the Robert McLaughlin Gallery to create a large-scale mural for the Oshawa Centre Mall. Working directly on a wall—without the ability to rotate the surface—introduced a new and exciting challenge. The project sparked her interest in public art and led to the development of new techniques, including creating crisp, straight-edged angles by dragging her squeeze bottle along a ruler. These discoveries opened up new possibilities within both her mural and studio practices.

In 2021, Shackleton began collaborating with her husband, Julian Brown, on augmented-reality-enabled projects. Combining Shackleton’s painting with Brown’s digital expertise, they transform static murals into immersive, interactive experiences. As an artist duo, they have exhibited at the Museum of Dufferin (Mulmur) and the Art Gallery of Northumberland (Cobourg), and have created AR-enabled murals with the City of Oshawa and the Town of Cobourg—one of which is now part of Cobourg’s collection. Most recently, they completed an eight-week international residency in London, England.

In 2024, Shackleton completed a six-year term on the Board of Directors at the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington, including two years as President. That same year, she received the Oshawa Culture Counts Professional Artist Award, nominated by the Robert McLaughlin Gallery.

The techniques that emerged from these public art projects have gradually made their way back into Shackleton’s studio practice. In 2025, she reintroduced the brush into her process for the first time in more than a decade. In 2026, she will release a new series on canvas titled The Brush Returns, where drips and brushwork come together—bringing gravity, gesture, and intention into conversation.