Artist Statement

As a young girl, as I stood among the Lantana and Phlox blooming in my great grandmother’s garden watching a Monarch butterfly gracefully fluttering about, I became aware of a sensation. Was it love? Wonder? Yes. But I’ve come to recognize that sensation as a yearning to understand how I was like the butterfly and how the butterfly was like me. Today my work is centered on exploring the connections I see and feel between myself and the environments I find myself within. It is an intrinsic element of my practice to walk and observe and I often have experiences with other forms of life that feel prophetical, divinatory, sacred. These encounters are genuine gifts of beauty, foretelling messages, signals of belonging. Capturing these occurrences through observation based drawing is a profoundly beautiful kinesthetic process, further embedding the moment, expanding the nuances of similarities between myself and my subjects. I endeavor to understand and metabolize both personal and communal experiences by looking to the land and other beings for guidance and inspiration. As I move through the world my attention and awareness are active towards safety and suggestion, scanning and searching, following impulse and intuition. I carry what transpires to the refuge of my studio and through drawing commemorate the revelations of my perceptions, orchestrating compositions that attempt to convey the undeniably intertwined nature of our existence with our wild counterparts and the world we share.

Through my studio practice, I am developing a deep and diverse collection of drawings depicting animals, plants and insects. Each drawing represents an individual form of life as well as a category of species. I hold this as a library of sorts, where each species adds another facet to the visual vocabulary for the stories I am compelled to tell – stories that explore the genuine connections I witness and discover, as well as the imagined relationships that arise through play. Each creature has a role in the ecosystem of their lives and the lives of others. They bring along their own story as well as the tales different human cultures have ascribed to them. I use them both symbolically and metaphorically to create intricate and immersive works of art that illustrate both real and imagined narratives of interdependence, mutualism, coexistence and flourishing ecosystems. Collage is the ideation process that allows me to experiment with characters, content and composition both on the surface of the artwork and out into and around the space or place where they are situated, constructing the illusion of expansive interior landscapes. The work celebrates wildness, reshaping creation myths and false narratives to illustrate kinship with the more than human world as well as my musings of how we might continue to evolve to more overtly display characteristics, abilities and behaviors of the beings that surround us.

Sheila Metcalf Tobin holds a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago but long before her formal education began she fell in love with the practice of drawing. The focus and attention required in observation based drawing cultivates connection between the drawer and the subject and opens the possibility of knowing akin to tenderly holding and touching, fostering both love and empathy. All of Sheila’s work begins with drawing as a process to explore and capture an encounter like the one in her great grandmother's garden. Her individual drawings expand into compositions on paper, wood, fabric and onto and around the architectural spaces it inhabits with the use of a variety of media, collage and decal installations that attempt to convey a deep love of the world and the beautiful complexity of the kinship we share with our wild counterparts.

Sheila’s artwork has been exhibited nationally, internationally and locally in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area at many venues including the DeYoung Museum, Bedford Gallery, the Whitney Modern and it has been included in magazines and exhibition catalogs. She is also very honored to have her work included in many private collections from the San Francisco Bay Area of California to Brooklyn NYC. Her studio practice is sustained by teaching others to draw and explore their unique creativity, as a full time community college drawing instructor at Merritt College in Oakland, California. She lives in Berkeley, California with her family including her husband of 23 years, two beloved sons, a large and adored pit bull, two cats and two backyard chickens.

Artist Biography

Exhibition Resume

Born

1969 Sacramento, California

Education

1995 The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, Master of Fine Arts

1991 The Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland, Bachelor of Fine Arts

Professional Experience (selected)

2014~2025

Department Chair, Merritt College Arts Department, Merritt College, Oakland California

2013~present

Full Time Art Instructor Merritt College, Oakland California

Selected Exhibitions

2026

56th Annual Textile Exhibition, Olive Hyde Gallery, Fremont California

2026 Salon, Triton Museum, Santa Clara, California

Art of Nature, Santa Cruz Natural History Museum, Santa Cruz, California

Perch, Flutter, Soar, Museum of Northern California Art, Chico, California

10 x 10, Faultline Gallery, Oakland California

2025

Go Figure, O’Hanlon Center for the Arts, Online Exhibition

She Carries the Sky, Visionary Arts Collective, Online Exhibition

Collect Them All, Jen Tough Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Wild, Jen Tough Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Resident Exhibition, Jen Tough Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Handle with Care: A Fragile World a Bioneers Conference Exhibition, Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley, California

The 6000 Circle Project: Honoring the Feminine, The Center for the Arts, Grass Valley, California

Birds, Birds and More Birds, Museum of Northern California, Chico, California

2024

Joy, Arc Gallery & Studios, San Francisco, California

Cut Paste Create: The Art of Collage, The Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek, California

The 6000 Circle Project: Honoring the Feminine, Arc Gallery & Studios, San Francisco, California

Lost Wild, Curator Marie Cameron, The Whitney Modern, Los Gatos, California

ArtsThrive 2024, Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, New Mexico

2023

The Space Between, Curator by Karen Gutfreund, ARC Gallery, San Francisco, California

Devasting Loves & Transcendent Hatreds, Abrams Claghorn Gallery, Albany, California

Kinship with Birds in Flight or Plight, WEAD Online Exhibition

The DeYoung Open 2023, DeYoung Museum, San Francisco California

Bright Side, Jen Tough Gallery, Santa Fe New Mexico

Solo Exhibition, diPietro Todd Salon, San Fransisco California

2023 Spring Collective Exhibition, Jen Tough Gallery, Santa Fe New Mexico

What Are We Grateful For, Sweetie’s Art Bar, San Francisco California

2022

Connections, Old People’s Bizarre, Berkeley California

In My Backyard, Gearbox Gallery, Oakland California

The Feminine Journey, Beseder Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic

Red, O’Hanlon Center for the Arts, Mill Valley, California

Water is Life, San Francisco Women Artists Gallery, San Francisco, California

Land, Sea, Sky, Artist Alliance Online Exhibition, Curator: Emily Wilker

Artist’s Vision 2022, Marin Society of Artists, Online Exhibition

2021

Prayer for the Western Monarch, Cedar Street Gallery, Berkeley, California

2020

The Ground Upon Which We Stand, Abrams Claghorn Gallery, Albany, California

2019

Evolutions and Reconfigurations, The Lightroom, Berkeley, California

Wander, Connect, Reflect, Studios Eleven, Oakland, California

2018

Berkeley Civic Arts Commission Grant Project, Residing Here: Public Portrait Project

National Night Out, Solano Stroll and Berkeley Farmers Market, Berkeley California

All the Art We Make, Merritt College Gallery, Oakland, California

2017

She Spoke, Ex Post, Prague, Czech Republic

Nasty Women Oakland, Omi Gallery, Oakland, California

Almost Family, Fiction Science Gallery, San Francisco, California

2016

Peralta Figurative Arts Faculty Exhibition, June Steingart Gallery, Oakland, California

Women’s HerStory Exhibition, June Steingart Gallery, Oakland, California

Awards and Honors

2026 First Place Drawing Award, 2026 Salon, Triton Museum, Santa Clara, California

2025 Faculty Sabbatical Award

Residency Award, Jen Tough Gallery & Air Studios, Santa Fe New Mexico

Finalist Collage and Fiber Category, Women United Artists 2025 Competition

2022-Present The Calling 22 Collaboration with Chantelle Goldthwaite and Yasmin Lambie-Simpson

2022 Second Prize, Artists Vision 2022, Juror Jen Tough

2019 Top 5 List, SF Open Studios Exhibition, Juror Patience Yi

2018 Panel Member, Women’s History Month, Laney College, Oakland California

2017 Berkeley Civic Arts Program Grant Recipient

Selected Publications

2026 Featured Artist, Create! Magazine, Issue 55, March 2026

2026 Women United Art Magazine, Issue XIV Special Edition 2026

2024 Autre, Nurturing Nature in Lost Wild: Art on the Edge of the Anthropocene by Chimera Mohammadi

2023 Women United Art Magazine, Issue V, Autumn 2023

2022 Contemporary Artist, Issue I, Autumn 2022

2018 Residing Here: Public Portrait Project, Featured in the Community Section of Berkeleyside