Throughout her career though, she made time for her love of fine art--a love that started early in life through family outings to the Cleveland Museum of Art.  “I would have started drawing earlier, but I was  an active child,” she jokes. “I never had the discipline to sit still. I could be found playing neighborhood baseball, climbing a tree or exploring the fields and ‘soon-to-be-built-on’ vacant lots in our area. My friends and I were always hunting for new places to discover ‘untouched’ nature.”

Shanahan believes that these childhood experiences evolved into an almost reverent love for painting.  Where she once scouted for natural vistas, she now explores the power of color, shape, edge and placement..  "These are the key to communication. Whatever language you speak; whatever culture; whatever generation, we all react to the visual. Red could mean passion to some. but gore to others.."  She continues, "My approach  has always been influenced  with studies of how science and consciousness meet" she explains. "Thin layers of paint merge, combine, morph…and develop into a work of art. It’s my vision of how ‘reality’ works—overlapping energies mix and combine to create what we see and feel.  And then it’s manipulated by our brain, personal histories, higher self or whatever you call your inner being.. And whatever emotion or meaning bubbles up for the viewer is what I meant to happen."
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Her approach to painting was noticed by Magical Blend Magazine in the mid-90s where her painting, “The Soul Remembers” was featured.  Since then her work has won several local awards in Ohio and Florida and has also shown in Vermont and Georgia. Recently, her painting "Ophelia's Pond Revisited" was selected to be included in the Samsung Frame TV and is consistently one of the top ten paintings selected by subscribers. Recenty, her painting, "Shadow Play in Walsingham Park" was selected to be included with LG TV's similar program.

In 2020-2021, Shanahan was so moved by the horrors of Covid 19 that she volunteered her talents to Faces Not Numbers, a group of artists that painted portraits of pandemic victims in an attempt to help soothe the pain of those they left behind. The portraits were gratis except for postage.  

​When not painting, she's a self-described learning junky including world history, art history, philosophy, and memoirs.  As she explains, "It helps me find the common threads that make us human."