ARTIST PROFILE

Many years ago, Shannon McGee walked the streets of the medieval French town of Foix where he was teaching English.  Though he visited museums, castles and ancient villages all over Europe, he never really thought of becoming an artist.  Upon returning stateside, he began working for a large corporation.  Ten  years later, he left the office and opened an antiques store on Greenville's up and coming Main Street.  Two years later, he left a thriving Main Street for the West  End; however, 1998 turned out to be a few years too early.  The move proved fruitful in a different way as McGee found a demand for his artistic talent of transforming drab concrete walls and floors into something special.

Shannon began by using artist pigments and stains to decorate concrete floors and glazes and earth pigments on walls.  Soon, customers were asking him to create the same finishes in their homes and businesses. Not content with the fake (faux) look of acrylic glazes and paints, he began using real Italian marble plasters to try to capture the true look of the castles and villas he had experienced in Europe.  Soon,  he developed  a process that creates a finish that has layers of depth and age like real stone that cannot be duplicated by synthetic products.    At Artisanal Finishes, the product offerings include real marble plasters, dolomite-enhanced lime plasters and polymer-modified cement floor coatings.