Rejecting painting with oil, he created colorful collages from various materials (cloth, thread, etc.), attached to unstretched canvas and colored with acrylic paint. While some of his work recalls the psychedelic 1960s, others reflect the colors of his country childhood, and his spirit of adventure.
Shields was born in 1944 in Harrington, Kansas, and grew up on the family farm. It is here where he picked up his sewing skills, later used in his collages, from his mother and sisters. For a while, he studied engineering, and from 1963 to 1966 theater and art at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. In 1966, he left for New York City without graduating, and began working as an artist. He acted and designed stage sets during summer workshops at the University of Maine (1966-1967), and had his first show at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York in 1969.

He worked in a wide range of media, including Spin Art (1973-197), where he painted in washes of color over bands of cotton on canvas, in Finger Lickin' (1974-1976), he created patterns of beads, threads, and rope, and throughout his career he worked in various printing techniques. In "The Castle Window Set" (1981), he combined etching and aquatint with relief printing on paper handmade in India. Shields also experimented with animation, jewelry, and installations.

Awards:
Guggenheim Fellowship

Selected Solo Exhibitions:
1989 Contemporary Art Gallery, Ahmedabad, India
1987 New Jersey Center for Visual Arts, Summit, New Jersey
1986 Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, Cleveland, Ohio
1985 University Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
1984 Zurich, Switzerland
1983 Tokyo, Japan
1982 Fine Arts Museum of the South, Mobile, Alabama
1982 Middlebury College, Vermont

Selected Group Exhibitions:
1989 "First Impressions", Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
1986 "Made in India", The Museum of Modern Art, New York
1986 "Connecticut Collects: American Art since 1960", Whitney Museum of American Art/Fairfield County, Stamford, Connecticut
1984 "Sculpture from the Ceiling", Tangeman Fine Arts Gallery, University of Cincinnati, Ohio
1981 "Druckgraphik: Wandlungen eines Mediums seit 1945", Kupferstichkabinett Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Germany
1980 "Perceiving Modern Sculpture: Selections fot the Sighted and Non-Sighted, Grey Art Gallery, New York University, New York
1980 "Drawings: The Pluralist Decade", American Pavillion, Venice Biennale, Italy

Collections:
Art Institute of Chicago
Cleveland Museum of Art
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Smithsonian Institution
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Alan J.Shields lived on a farm in Shelter Island, New York, and died at age 61 from emphysema.

Sources include:
Tandem Press
Article by Christopher Masters, The Guardian Tuesday, February 28, 2006