Finding Light in the Trees

Elizabeth Sheats’ journey from interior design to Azalea Festival artist is shaped by loss, hope, and Wilmington’s live oaks

By Jen Reed

Elizabeth Sheats grew up in Wilmington looking forward to the North Carolina Azalea Festival each spring. She watched the parade, wandered the street fair and, years later, stood among the Azalea Belles as a high school student. In 2026, she returns to the festival in a new role — one that feels both full circle and deeply personal — as the event’s commissioned artist.

Wilmington is not just where she works; it’s where her roots run deep. She grew up beneath its live oaks, walked its streets as a child anticipating festival weekends, and once served as an Azalea Belle herself. To now give back to the festival through her art, she says, feels humbling and meaningful.

Sheats comes from a creative family on her mother’s side. She credits an aunt, an art teacher in Nashville, Tennessee, with instilling in her a love for the arts. As a student, she gravitated toward art classes and stayed late after school to prepare for local competitions. She studied art in college, even though — like many young artists — she wasn’t entirely sure where it would lead.

After graduation, Sheats spent a decade working in interior design, a field that sharpened her technical skills and eye for color. She became particularly known for her renderings, a precision skill that later evolved into a niche she still enjoys today: detailed home portrait commissions. Those years weren’t a detour, she says, but a foundation — training her to see proportion, color, and light in ways that now inform her fine art.

It wasn’t until after the birth of her second child that Sheats decided to return to art. Motherhood didn’t quiet the creative drive, she says — it amplified it. She took advantage of nap times to experiment and find her style. At first, she worked in watercolor because it was easy to set down when the baby woke. Since then, she has added acrylic, and her work has become increasingly recognizable, especially for one defining subject: tree canopies.

Sheats has been painting her now-signature live oak canopies since 2018, though their presence in her visual language stretches back much further. She grew up on South Live Oak Parkway, surrounded by arching branches that once felt ordinary, almost invisible. Only later did she realize how deeply those trees had shaped her sense of beauty and place.

Just before Hurricane Florence, she began painting the maritime forest of Bald Head Island, then the familiar canopy along Country Club Road. When the storm hit — and the live oaks endured — something shifted. Sheats found herself studying not just their beauty, but their resilience. The way their limbs bend and arch, she noticed, is precisely what allows them to withstand powerful storms.

That resilience became symbolic. What began as a visual fascination grew into something deeper. Her canopies are not just landscapes; they are emotional spaces. Sheats wanted her paintings to offer more than decoration. She wanted them to bring hope into people’s homes.

“There’s a deeper message I’m trying to convey,” she said. “Not just a pretty scene, but one that brings peace.”

That intention is informed, in part, by loss. Sheats lost her sister to cancer in 1993, an experience that left a lasting imprint. Creating beauty, she says, feels like a way of bringing light back into the world.

In recent years, Sheats’ work has appeared in shows throughout the area, including exhibitions at WHQR’s McErny Gallery and the Burgwin-Wright House, and online with The Scouted Studio and The Studio Collective. This year, she is preparing for two online shows with the KP Collective and The Green Room at 831. She is also known locally for Christmas ornaments featuring beloved landmarks from Wrightsville Beach and Bald Head Island, along with annual calendars that have become favorites with collectors.

During the Azalea Festival, Sheats will speak about her artistic journey to students at Cape Fear Academy, where she attended middle school. Those moments, she says, feel especially meaningful. Encouragement played a crucial role in her own path: Teachers who “saw something” and family members who cheered her on helped make this moment possible.

Her Azalea Festival piece, “Where the Oaks Meet,” reflects all of that history. Impressionistic rather than literal, it’s a collection of feelings more than a specific place. Live oaks stretch toward one another. Azaleas bloom in varied colors. Light and shadow mingle along a shared path. The title, she explains, is intentional — meant to capture not only the physical gathering of trees, but the social spirit of the festival itself, as if even the oaks are chatting and dancing in the breeze like guests at the Garden Party.

At its heart, the work reflects what Sheats loves most about being an artist: the process of creating something that didn’t exist before. Or, as she often returns to a favorite quote borrowed from Neil Gaiman: “The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t there before.”

For Sheats, that brightness is rooted here — under the trees, among the people, in a community as deeply connected as the live oaks themselves.

For more information, please visit elizabethsheats.com.