In addition to being a writer, I am also a visual artist, working in various media. My work explores themes of connection, disconnection, tension and anxiety inherent to human experience. I am a poet and essayist who relishes in the lyric impulse, so my 2D work, too, gravitates towards abstraction, juxtaposition, fragmentation and suggestion. I find beauty in the elliptical, the incomplete, the slightly askew. My work is intuitive and organic, allowing the idea and the feeling of the work to dictate its form and medium. As I paint, I invite my physical surroundings and emotional weather to enter the work via bold, vibrant color, meaningful mark making, textural contrast and collage. Because of my work as a writer, my paintings celebrate and often emphasize the relationship between text and image, either concretely, where text becomes part of the visual image, or reverse ekphrastically, where the image is inspired by texts such as poems, letters, conversations, and the narratives that live inside memory. 

Please browse my portfolio by clicking on the images below. I also have an Etsy storefront where you can purchase my art: https://sheilasquillanteart.etsy.com. If you are interested in something you see here that isn’t there, just message me. Thank you!