About Melissa Shirley Designs

Melissa Shirley Designs handpainted needlepoint canvasses are available at fine needlework shops throughout the United States and Canada. Melissa's complete catalog is on hand in each shop carrying her designs.All Melissa Shirley Designs images depicted on this site are protected under copyright law.

About Melissa.

Melissa has been designing and painting hand painted needlepoint since 1981.She began her designing career while living with her husband Tom in a very small and beautiful Northern California coastal town. She is a self taught painter and had been painting for her own pleasure when a good friend taught her how to paint on needlepoint canvas. Together they worked for a San Francisco Bay Area needlepoint designer as production painters. Eventually she started sketching her own designs. She showed them to a needlepoint shop in Burlingame, CA. The shop owners were excited about the work and the prospect of having a designer for their shop. From that point Melissa Shirley Designs (first known as Golden Bee) took off.

Melissa and Tom moved east into the Sierra foothills a few years later.They built a home, had a wonderful son, Samuel, and are now settled in a small, historic gold rush era town. It is hilly and picturesque, cold in the winter and hot in the summer. Their home was built by miners in the 1860s, which is kind of old by California standards and just a few blocks from their studio. They walk to work most days across a creek on an old bridge to the studio, up the street that used to be home to all the houses of ill repute. Their little town was infamous for gambling and prostitution well into the 1950s. Church Street is just up the hill from the studio. Redemption was not far away.

Melissa oversees all aspects of Melissa Shirley Designs with the help and support of Tom and a wonderful staff. In the past few years she has chosen to license the work of a few artists whose work she greatly admires. The first was John Johannsen whose magical studio is just down the street from Melissa's. Next came the beautiful work of Linda Carter Holman and starting in 2006 she has licensed the charming work of Mary Lake-Thompson.

About Linda Carter Holman.

Self taught painter Linda Carter Holman was born in Oklahoma. She spent her early childhood in Venezuela and it was there her first realization came that she was to become an artist. By the age of twenty Linda's role as a painter had begun.

Observing a work by Carter Holman is like opening the pages of a good book filled with colorful characters and descriptive narrative. A master storyteller, Carter Holman draws on her own life experience and vivid imagination to create canvases that speak of abundance, harmony, and good spirits. Primarily a painter of women, she is well known for her Latin Ladies and Cowgirls.

Linda Carter Holman ---Painter, sculpture, print maker.

Click here to visit Linda Carter Holman's web site.

About John Johannsen.

John Johannsen began painting in 1952 and first showcased his vibrant canvases in a one-man show at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. Subsequently, he presented one-man and group shows at prestigious galleries in San Francisco, Dallas, New York and Reno.

For 17 years he was visual merchandising manager at Saks Fifth Avenue's Northern California stores. He and two partners launched and, for the next 15 years, operated shops at Lake Tahoe and in Paris. John's art, a union of naive subjects viewed with a sophisticated approach, has emerged in his design of everything from glittering galas and gowns to charming gift items and fancifully painted furniture.

John now produces his art in a studio in the historic Gold Country town of Jackson, California.

About Mary Lake-Thompson.

Mary started drawing and painting from the time she was a young child and never looked back. Growing up, she bounced around from Colorado, to Connecticut, and then back to Colorado where she attended the University of Colorado as an art student. After 2 years there, she decided she could not resist the lively state of California, and moved to San Francisco in 1970. She attended the San Francisco Art Institute where she majored in Photography. Mary met her husband, Richard Thompson, not long after arriving in the west and they married in 1974. After graduating, Mary and Richard grew tired of the city life and chose to move to the quiet town of Oroville, located about 45 minutes north of Sacramento.

It is in Oroville that Mary really began her career as a commercial artist. Soon after moving to Oroville, she had 2 daughters, Sara in 1977, and Abby in 1979. Her beautiful children served well as inspiration in her first paintings. She often used them in illustrations, along with her many beloved animals and gardens where she lived in picturesque Northern California. In the early 80’s, Mary was lucky enough to land an art show at a gallery called The Nut Tree, also located in Northern California. It was here that she sold 60 paintings and was the true start to her career. She began to sell prints to local galleries and went door to door, up and down California, selling these prints out of the trunk of her car. After the prints proved to be successful, she began a greeting card company, using her own artwork on the cards. Along with Richard, she began attending the New York Stationary show where she picked up licensing contracts, one of which was C.R. Gibson. She designed baby books, address books, diaries, paper napkins etc. Eddie Bauer was the next to approach her to design and produce gift baskets for them, which included soaps and lotion. It was after this order, that Mary got the idea to turn her designing skills into doing packaging of her own. From this point her company has designed and produced soaps, towels, aprons, bath products, drawer liners, sachets and most recently, napkins and hats. Mary has been able to use her own unique designs on all of these products as well as using reproductions of handpicked vintage art.

Click here to visit Mary Lake-Thompson's web site.