Shani Marchant was born in Portland, Oregon in 1947. Shani is married to Michael Schmeltzer and has one daughter, Morgan. In high school, Shani began taking college art classes and started to show her work early on. She studied painting at Spokane’s Fort Wright College. Shani then attended the Art Students’ League in New York. She studied with internationally acclaimed painter, Grace Hartigan at the Maryland Institute of Art in Baltimore, MD where she graduated with a master of fine art. While living in Spokane, WA Shani completed paintings from the alphabet series in the early period, underwater series and figurative work, which comprise up to half of the artist’s total body of work. While living in Crescent City, California from 2003 to 2006, Shani explored the gestural, abstract techniques on 18x24 canvases and works on paper. She created Structural Scape, a 70x90 oil painting, which exemplifies the strong influences of the environment and the weather moments where she lived.

Now living in the Northwest, the 2009 works of art, "Daisy in Seattle", "the Warriors", "Cultural Grids" are interactions of urban living. She approached the canvases with cultural vibrancy-- seeking the color and movement with structure.