Born in Montreal, Canada, Shaktima (Michele) Brien is a Surreal artist. A member of The Palm Springs Art Museum Artists Council, Brien curates a Surreal Art exhibition at Gallery 446 in Palm Springs in 2012. Brien's paintings were shown at the museum's 2009 ACE juried exhibition, Faculty Members Holiday Fair, and Day of the Dead cultural event.
With two solo exhibitions in Hollywood and Palm Springs, and a literary novel, Angelina and Men (2010), a kunstlerroman, Brien received an Honorable Mention at the 10th Juried Art Show of the City of Palm Springs in 2008, while her tableaux were exhibited at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History for the premiere of Signs of Time in 2004, a film on the archeologist Marija Gimbutas (The Language of the Goddess). In the 90’s, Judy Freeman, Associate Curator of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, included Brien's work in a Women's Caucus for Art exhibition; others were sold at the Shirley MacLaine and Whoopi Goldberg Art Auction.