Stephanie Shimerdla was born in September of 1974 to George and Donna Jackson. She lived in Rutland, VT until the 4th grade. It was then that her parents divorced and she went to live in Sarasota, FL with her mother and her younger brother. She graduated from Riverview High School in 1992. Her childhood dreams of becoming a veterinarian at a zoo were crushed when she learned that she had developed an allergy to most animals. Therefore, she spent many years in and out of college attempting to find another major. But, that's alright... during that time, she found the man of her dreams. Joseph Shimerdla began his service in the US Military after graduating from West Point in 1998. The two of them have been moving all over the US to Joseph's different duty stations, but during their 2 years at Fort Bragg, NC, Stephanie finally finished college. She graduated Summa Cum Laude in 2003 from Methodist College with a degree in Computer Science and a minor in Mathematics.

In January 2004, Joseph was assigned to Camp Humphreys, South Korea, and Stephanie joined him overseas. The two of them stayed in South Korea for a year, and have now returned to the US and are stationed at Fort Rucker, Alabama.

I have loved artwork since my youth, and have been lucky enough to have it passed down to me from both sides of the family. My father instilled in me my love for fantasy, however. When I was a child and my brother and I would go visit him, he would tell us fantastical stories about unicorns and sea monsters, and I was hooked.

Much of my artwork is several types of styles rather than specializing in one, particular type of piece. Much of my work until recently has been dealing with my wishes to improve on the more technical aspects of my painting. I'm finally getting to a point where I feel that I can find a specialization or "niche" for myself (or two, or maybe three). It's very hard for me to concentrate on one area, and I think most of my future work will primarily in fantasy and science fiction, wildlife, and some more helicopters (for all those pilots at Fort Rucker, the home of Army aviation!) I'm finally going to start trying to get some of my work sold commercially, as well. We'll see how that goes.

I hope that you can find at least one piece here that you really enjoy. Thank you so very much for visiting my gallery!