Karey Shinn was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. She studied Fine Art at the University of Manitoba for two years before leaving to study Fine Art in the UK. Upon graduating with a BA Honours in Fine Art from the Leeds Polytechnic in 1976, Karey moved to Toronto Canada, and married fellow British Leeds Polytechnic Art School student Nick Shinn. Karey and Nick have two children and continue to work in their Toronto studio. Karey returned to England in 2004-5 to complete her Masters Degree in Fine Art at the Norwich School of Art and Design.

Karey has been involved with a number of environmental groups in Toronto, principally The Safe Sewage Committe, since 1988. Her activism is directly responsible for the City of Toronto ater Conservation program, the new (2000) Sewer-Use By-Law ( that is now the most stringent in North America ) and the closing of several polluting incinerators in the portlands burning garbage and sewage on the waterfront.

My current practice is the result of integrating my work as an artist with my experience as an environmental activist. My intention is to give formless, invisible, and embedded substances and concepts, a visual presence. Carbon dioxide and climate change, ,hazardous materials and risk, pesticides and infertility, chemicals and cancer, water and contamination, energy and industrialized environments, are just a few issues and consequences that interest me as potential visual material.

My practice recontextualizes the unresolved and often supressed debate about serious 21st century challenges facing the future of life on our planet.