Carolyn Shattuck who was born in Montreal, Canada, moved to the United States in 1971. After a short stay, she and her husband lived in Okinawa, Japan for three years where she became influenced by the history and beauty of the Japanese prints . She returned to the United States and studied painting at Bard College. After graduating, she divided her time between her painting and developing a unique printing method, using the monotype as a base. Her work embraces the juxtaposition of many cross-cultural images. For the past few years she has been studying the imagery of New England tombstones. The folk art of urns, angels, death’s heads and hourglasses are reinvented through narrative still lifes and landscapes. More recently, she has been influenced by a trip to China where she viewed the terra cotta warriors which translated into several bodies of work, combining dry point technique and the monotype. Shattuck believes her work is the freedom to extrapolate ideas and motifs from many sources in order that they can cross-pollinate and exist as a whole. She says, "I hope to celebrate life in all its complexities while acknowledging the shadow on my left shoulder."