Born in Kirkcaldy in Fife in 1963, Sheila McInnes studied architecture at Edinburgh College of Art, qualifying as an architect in 1988. After working in an architectural practice for a time she decided to pursue life as a full-time artist and began exhibiting her paintings in 1991, exhibiting regularly in Glasgow, Edinburgh and London since.
McInnes' paintings are intensely personal, they capture her everyday life, her response to things that she has experienced, either yesterday, in her childhood or even events that she imagines might have been.
These paintings are glimpses. Things noticed in passing. Encounters with owls. Ordinary everyday pleasures.
Having developed a highly individual style, she beautifully observes situations, everyday scenes of life captured in a moment. Her work has been described as 'a mixture of the naïve, the personal, and the sophisticated' in its handling of colour and tone.