Elizabeth Shannon Phillips
Elizabeth Shannon Phillips (February 27, 1911 – June 14, 1997), also known as Elizabeth Phillips Heller, was an American painter, watercolorist, muralist, and newspaper editor. She was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to William Shannon Phillips. Her sister Peggy Philips was also an artist.
Phillips studied at Carnegie Mellon University, graduating in 1933, and then studied at the Art Students League of New York. She won a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation fellowship in 1933. In 1939 she married actor Franklin M. Heller, and they had one daughter born in 1944. After their marriage, she settled in Connecticut and edited the Stratford Weekly newspaper.
Her art received early recognition: a still-life she painted appeared in the Hotel Schenley exhibition in 1933, and her work Sunday Morning in the Park earned praise at the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh show in 1936. She was commissioned by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture to create post office murals: Crossing of the West River, 1648 (1937) in West Haven, Connecticut, and Mountain Landscape (1942) in Roaring Spring, Pennsylvania.
Phillips was a member of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh. She died from pneumonia complications on June 14, 1997, in North Branford, Connecticut; her husband Franklin died less than a month later.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 04:22 (CET).