The art of Shirley Plaut Schaefer.

Shirley Plaut Schaefer combined careers in fine and applied art for more than six decades.  Born in New York City in 1920, she attended the Art Students League, the National Academy of Design, and the New York School of Fine and Applied  Arts (later Parsons/The New School), and served as the Art Director of the Promotion Department of the New York Times from 1943 through 1945. Examples of her work there were published in three successive volumes of Art Directors Annual. She also designed the first seal for the Borough of Queens.

After leaving the Times and getting married, she concentrated on the fine arts, primarily with oil paints, as well as water colors, acrylics, and linoleum cuts. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Carnegie Institute of Arts, American Contemporary Art Gallery (ACA), Everhart Museum (Scranton), San Diego Art Institute, and elsewhere.  In the 1960s, she was represented by Pietrantonio Galleries, New York. Her paintings are included in a number of private collections.

In 1978, she moved to San Diego, where she continued her painting and printed graphics, working extensively with the Old Globe Theatre.  She died in 2017 at the age of ninety-seven, drawing until her final years.