Phyllis Shafer, a talented plein air artist based in Lake Tahoe, brings the beauty of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to life with her psychedelic landscape paintings. Through vibrant oil paints, she captures the energy of the American West’s mountains, lakes, and forests, offering a surreal take on nature. Instead of aiming for photorealism, Shafer’s work twists perspectives and enhances natural elements, creating dreamlike scenes that blur the line between the real and the fantastical.
Growing up in rural upstate New York, Shafer developed a deep love for nature. “My grandparents were farmers, so the land is part of my DNA,” she explains. However, it was her move to Lake Tahoe, nestled within the Sierra Nevada Mountains, that fueled her passion for plein air painting. Every year from April to October, Shafer spends her summers outdoors, painting the breathtaking landscapes around her. She starts by observing and painting in nature, then returns to her studio to enhance the work, blending reality with fantasy.
In Shafer’s pieces, clouds swirl like smoke, trees bend and stretch in unexpected ways, and flowers bloom larger than life. One of her standout paintings, Flicker’s Ascent, features a landscape curling up at the edges, almost as if viewed through a fish-eye lens, while giant birds soar overhead. The way Shafer marries natural elements with her distinctive surreal style makes each painting a mesmerizing escape into an imaginative world.
While nature remains Shafer’s main source of inspiration, her style is also influenced by 20th-century American Modernists like Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood, as well as artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe and Charles Burchfield. “I’ve always been drawn to early 20th-century regionalist paintings,” she says, and you can see echoes of these influences in her work.
Explore more of Phyllis Shafer’s incredible art on her website, and get a glimpse into the vibrant, swirling beauty of the Sierra Nevada landscapes through her surreal and captivating paintings.
