Shirley swapped startups for centuries-old art, using delicate layers of gold leaf to tell powerful stories of women, resilience, and reinvention.
What if success wasn’t a destination, but an ability to transform over and over again? For Shirley Yang Crutchfield, that transformation glows quite literally in sheets of gold.
Formerly a high-achieving tech founder, Shirley left behind the buzz of Silicon Valley to embrace an entirely different rhythm, one rooted in stillness, slowness, and centuries-old craftsmanship. Today, she is a self-taught artist based in Chicago, known for her radiant, Renaissance-inspired paintings that feature water gilding, pastiglia, and sgraffito—delicate, demanding processes once reserved for religious art and royal portraits.
“There’s an honesty in this kind of work,” Shirley says. “You can’t rush it. You have to let the materials guide you. It’s humbling and powerful.”
Her subjects? Women. Not the idealized or stylized kind but real, complex, and unapologetically strong. Shirley’s gilded icons radiate grace, resilience, and quiet intensity. They are both contemporary and timeless, much like her own journey.
Water gilding is no ordinary craft. It involves layering gesso, clay bole, and ultra-thin sheets of gold leaf each step requiring precision and patience.
Unlike modern quick-dry techniques, this method demands time, care, and total immersion. For Shirley, it became more than art. It became therapy. It became truth.
Gold has always symbolized worth, divinity, and reverence,” she explains. “I wanted to bring that same reverence to the everyday woman. To the parts of ourselves we often hide or rush past.
Before diving into art full-time, Shirley was building tools to support entrepreneurs and earning praise in major business publications. After two decades of technological achievements, she felt it was time to create and build from something deeply personal, something that mirrored her own transformation.
The transition wasn’t just a career change, it was a complete shift in mindset and lifestyle. She sold her tech company, welcomed her second child, and stepped into the world of fine art. Trading the fast pace and familiarity of startup life for the solitude of a studio came with uncertainty and yet, excitement.
She immersed herself in studying centuries-old techniques and experimenting with raw materials. Experimentation and failure in the learning process was sometimes very frustrating but necessary.
“I didn’t start out with confidence. I started out with curiosity,” she shares. “Over time, that curiosity turned into craft, and the craft became a way to express my journey.”
Her upcoming Live Water Gilding Demo & Artist Talk at Sun Valley Contemporary Gallery on August 30th 2025, is not just a showcase of art, it’s proof of evolution. A celebration of how each of us can reinvent ourselves over and over again.
Collectors, galleries, and art lovers are responding. Her works now adorn walls and inspire dialogue around feminine identity, empowerment, and endurance.
In a world that often glorifies speed and surface, Shirley invites us to slow down and look deeper. To see the layers beneath our public selves. To honor the sacred within the everyday.
Her work is a quiet revolution. Not loud, not flashy but enduring, radiant, and unshakeable.
Just like the women she paints.
