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Sheila Lebowitz
USA
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"The paint tells me what it wants to become, the same way the clay used to."
Sheila Lebowitz is a Las Vegas based artist working in acrylic fluid art, a medium she discovered in 2025 at the age of seventy-five after a lifetime spent making things with her hands. Her paintings are bright, layered, and alive with movement: flowers that seem to lift off the canvas, parasols that push forward toward the viewer, leaves breaking through metallic ground, skies where sun and blue mix into orange at their edges. For decades before she poured her first canvas, her practice was hand-built ceramics, pursued through art shows, workshops on two coasts, and a home studio with its own kiln. A retired lawyer, she brings to the new medium the same patience, curiosity, and willingness to be surprised that shaped her work in clay. What began as a way through loss has become a daily practice and, in her own words, her happy place.
Parasols of Flowers | Acrylic
$1,000
20" x 40"
I wanted to experiment with showing the beauty of nature through flowers, reflecting the brilliance of their colors, their gentle intertwining, and their movement. These qualities together can brighten your heart and energize you, while also giving you a feeling of peace and calm, something much needed in our hurried world. I also strive to create depth within the movement, which is why I like to create three-dimensional effects. Moving the paints, I carefully try to blend and balance the flowing colors.
Born and raised in New York City, Lebowitz began making art as a young child. The praise she received encouraged her to keep going, and the work made her happy, which at that age was reason enough. She studied at school, at the Y, and at home, and in her teens she applied to the city's High School of Music and Art, a selective public school whose reputation reached well beyond the five boroughs. Admission required an entrance exam made up of a portfolio review, an interview, and a drawing assignment completed on the spot in front of the examiners. She won a place. That early test of producing something worthwhile under pressure set a pattern that would follow her through every stage of her creative and professional life, and she still speaks of it with evident pride.
Colorful Parasols | Acrylic
$500
10" x 30"
Reminiscent of the colorful parasols of Japan, this painting was my attempt to simulate them. I wanted to use color and light to achieve movement and design. The parasols, or umbrellas, look three-dimensional, as if they are coming out toward the viewer, giving the work movement and life. I also included small gold highlights in the middle to accent the 3-D effect, and used bright, lively colors to evoke the happiness these parasols bring on the occasions when they are used.
"Some of my most interesting results came from mistakes I could never have planned."
Ceramics became her medium of choice as she moved from high school into college. She bought a kiln and began firing her own hand-built pieces at home, teaching herself the temperatures and timings that firing demands, and she joined a ceramics workshop across the city, traveling long distances by subway to reach it. Her work appeared in art shows around New York and sold through local stores. A move to Southern California changed nothing about the rhythm. She showed at fairs and exhibitions, joined another workshop, and set up a dedicated studio at home, stocked with supplies, tools, and a fully functional kiln. From the beginning she worked only by hand, without a wheel, preferring the direct contact between her fingers and the clay. That preference never changed in all the decades that followed.
Aloha/Bright Flowers 1 of 2 | Acrylic
$450
24" x 18"
I used these vibrant colors to elicit not only a feeling of joy and beauty, but also the gorgeous scenery of the Hawaiian and tropical islands. I chose colors that represented my goal, and I especially like the way the red and green work together without muddying into brown. I wanted red and green because to me they evoke beautiful orchids. With a vivid imagination, you can also see a white jellyfish with its lacy tentacles.
Law school interrupted the practice for the only extended period in her adult life. She was accepted into an accelerated program, one that left no room for anything except classes, study, and preparation for the state bar exam, and for two and a half years she made no art at all. When the program ended she went straight back to the clay, firing again in her garage and finding a workshop close enough to attend several times a week, which she did faithfully for years. Her ceramics sold at art shows, at fairs, and to private collectors who sought her out. The break had proven something she might otherwise never have tested: the need to make was not a phase or a hobby, but a permanent part of who she was, one that survived even a period designed to crowd everything else out.
This is a companion piece to Artwork 3. Both were painted at the same time using the same colors and techniques. In this painting, too, you can see jellyfish, or simply beautiful flowers that create a 3-D effect, blooming right in front of the viewer. Again, I like to bring movement into a painting, and I use color and design to achieve that goal.
Aloha/Bright Flowers 2 of 2 | Acrylic
$450
24" x 18"
"There is paint on my new tile floors no matter how many rugs I put down, and I have made peace with it. Every stain came from an afternoon spent doing the thing I love most. I do not see mess when I walk past. I see evidence."
"What I am after, more than anything, is movement. I want a flower to come off the surface and open right in front of whoever is standing there. I want the parasols to feel as if they are turning. I want you to see a sky of blues and sense that the sun is crossing it quickly. Depth is part of that, so I layer, and I use gold and bronze in small amounts to push some things back and bring others forward. I drag a skewer across the surface while everything is still fluid, drawing veins and fine lines that give a piece some air. And the cells delight me, those little rings that form on their own as the colors separate, because they are the one element I cannot fully control. I set the conditions, I tilt and I move, and then I stand back and let the pour finish the sentence. When it works, the whole piece feels like it is still in motion, and that is exactly the feeling I want to leave you with."
Bursting Flower | Acrylic
$400
20" x 16"
Keeping with the theme of the paintings above, this one has a pronounced 3-D effect. I wanted the flower to come off the canvas and burst in front of the viewer's eyes. Here the colors of the flower do not overpower, but remain the focal point against the background of green leaves. The colors are layered to reflect multiple dimensions of design and depth. If you look closely, you can see cells that have formed throughout the flower, especially around the green leaves.
Clay taught her a way of working she would carry into everything afterward. She rarely began with a fixed idea. Instead she put her hands into the material, felt its coldness and then its smoothness, and let the rhythm of her movements suggest a direction until, as she puts it, the two of them became one. She built, tore down, and built again until a piece looked finished. Then it had to dry without cracking and survive the kiln without breaking, and only then could the surface be addressed. She treated underglaze as a stain rather than a coat of color, applying it and wiping it back repeatedly until the shade, the depth, and the way light caught the surface were exactly right. She made her own stamps and engraved movement directly into the clay, and the staining let those marks speak.
Garden of Flowers | Acrylic
$400
10" x 30"
Inspired by Monet's water lily series, this painting kept developing toward the feel of his work as I painted. Like my floral paintings, it evokes color and some movement, though not as much as the others. It is calmer, giving a feeling of being surrounded by beautiful flowers. Small areas of metallic gold and a little bronze are used to highlight and create depth.
Relocating to Las Vegas in June 2022, she brought everything with her, the kiln included. The garage in the new house, though, had only one breaker, and the kiln needed two. Between unpacking, setting up the house, and organizing a new life in a new city, the electrical work was never done, and for a while the art took second place to everything else. By the spring of 2025 her attention had turned almost entirely to Zamora, an adopted retired racing greyhound whose health was failing. Caring for her, arranging her treatment, and simply being with her filled the days, and the studio went quiet. The kiln sat unconnected in the garage. There was no room, and no wish, to think about anything except the animal who needed her.
Originally, I limited my palette to blues, purples, and white. I created flowers that were more abstract than in some of my other paintings, more an illusion of flowers than a depiction. To round out the illusion, I used a little yellow in certain spots to create depth, and also created small, firefly-like creatures in yellow. I wanted something light and not overpowering, so with a skewer I drew little threads to give it an airy feeling.
Spring Rebirth | Acrylic
$350
10" x 30"
Everything changed in the same season. Around May of 2025, videos of acrylic fluid painting appeared in her Facebook feed, a technique she had never encountered. She was captivated at once. Paint with no form and no fixed design, treated in particular ways and combined with particular techniques, produced patterns, figures, and compositions full of movement and light. She recognized the feeling immediately. It was the same experience she had known with clay, the same sense of a material answering back, and she went all in, watching tutorials, joining groups, buying materials, and painting several times a week. She kept a log of every canvas, noting which paints she used, how she combined them, and what worked. Zamora died that June. Lebowitz says plainly that the paint was how she got through it.
"Who would have thought that at seventy-five, a retired lawyer, I would fall this hard for something I had never even heard of?"
Her subjects are drawn from what brings her joy. Flowers appear again and again, their colors intertwining and their forms built up in layers so that the blooms seem to come forward off the surface. One series draws on the colorful parasols of Japan, painted to look as though they are opening toward the viewer, with touches of gold at their centers. Another began with the reds and greens of Hawaiian orchids and revealed, as the paint moved, a white jellyfish trailing lacy tentacles. She has painted spring leaves in pearlescent blues and violets breaking through a metallic ground that stands for the cold of the season before, and a canvas inspired by Monet's water lilies that settles into something calmer than her usual work, with small areas of gold and bronze giving it depth.
Spring Emerging as Autumn Fades | Acrylic
$300
16" x 8"
Spring leaves in pearlescent blues, violets, and other colors break through the metallic colors that intertwine them. A skewer was used to create the lines of the veins and the movement within the piece. Sections of metallic represent the coldness of autumn, soon to be replaced by the warmth of spring. This painting has a lot of movement, in keeping with the idea of leaves blowing as the autumn winds give way to spring's warmth.
Color and movement are what she is chasing in every piece. She likes a red and a green that sit together without turning to mud. She has limited herself to four colors, yellow, red, turquoise, and medium blue, to watch a sun travel across a sky and leave orange where the two mixed. She has laid down row after row of standard and metallic acrylics so that each band reads on its own yet belongs to the next. She draws with a skewer, pulling fine threads through wet paint to make veins in a leaf or the drifting bodies of firefly-like creatures, and she watches for the cells that form as the paints separate. She credits decades of ceramics for training her eye long before she poured anything, and she keeps every painting as a lesson, asking what worked and what surprised her.
A palette of only four colors: yellow, red, turquoise, and medium blue. I wanted to concentrate on movement. This one feels like the sun moving quickly through a sky of blues. The yellow and red are brilliant, and in areas where they have mixed they create orange, which gives the painting more depth.
Sunburst | Acrylic
$250
12" x 12"
Today her studio occupies the room that used to be the den. It is full of paint, tools, and multi-tier racks, and despite runners and rugs the new tile floor carries stains she has no intention of cleaning, each one a record of an afternoon well spent. She has shown her paintings at artisan showcases in Las Vegas and has sold work there. She remains her own sharpest critic, and she does not love every canvas, but she looks at each one and asks what it has to teach her. She finds it a little astonishing that a retired lawyer in her seventies should have discovered something this consuming this late, and she has no plans to stop. Lebowitz intends to keep painting for as long as she is able, and she sees no reason that should be anytime soon.
Eruption of Colors | Acrylic
$400
20" x 16"
Using multiple colors of standard acrylics and acrylic metallics, I was going for layering of color and movement. I created an interruption of colors in this painting: row after row of different colors of standard and metallic paint. Each row of color can be distinguished, yet also fits with the next row and the next. Many cells can be seen within the painting.
"Losing Zamora was the hardest loss of my life, and pouring color onto canvas was how I found my way through it."
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