Tony Shiels was born 1938 in Salford, Lancashire, England. Inspired as a young lad seeing Dante, Cecil Lyle, Galli Galli, and other magi at the Blackpool Palace Theatre, he became a wizard and magician, being an artist by profession.

In the early 1960s, a new Post-War Generation of artists were taking on the established middle aged ‘Middle Generation’ of British Art. Tony Shiels’ painting evolved from his native Salford to London, Paris and St Ives. His work generally focuses on folklore and magic seen through the lens of the St Ives Scene.

After attending the Heatherley School of Fine Art in London, he moved to St Ives, Cornwall where in 1961, following the resignation of Barbara Hepworth, he was made a member of the committee of the influential Penwith Society of Arts. In St Ives he ran the progressive ‘Steps Gallery’, where he showed artists like Brian Wall and Bob Law. He had several solo exhibitions in London.

Tony saw himself as a part-time professional magician since about 1963. He worked via a professional tent show with mental magic and mentalism. Within Fortean and occult circles, he pioneered in bizarre magick.

In the late 1960s, after moving to live in Ponsanooth near Falmouth, he rediscovered stage magic – something he had been taught as a boy by his father and grandfather – and wrote articles for The Linking Ring and The Budget magazines. This included interviews with Ray Harryhausen and Ray Bradbury. He also published a trio of magic books: 13, Something Strange and Daemons Darklings and Doppelgangers which were sold in both the UK and the US and led to him being associated with 1970s bizarre magick.

Between 1970 and 1974, he performed as ‘Doc Shiels: Wizard of the West’ at festivals and faires in Cornwall, UK. This, presented with the help of friend Vernon Rose and the rest of the Shiels family, was a magic show that incorporated illusions such as the headless woman, the sub-trunk and the buzz-saw.

In 1975, he set up ‘Tom Fool’s Theatre of Tom Foolery’, which started as a troupe of ‘mummers’, before worked closely with the Footsbarn theatre.

He was involved in a series of ‘monster-raising’ exploits in 1976, which gave him considerable media attention, particularly when he began ‘invoking’ the monsters with the aid of a coven of sky-cade (naked) witches. His attempts to ‘raise’ Morgawr the Cornish sea monster, were covered by BBC TV, Fortean Times, local newspapers, and appeared in national newspapers such as the Reveille and News of the World.

At around the same time he reported on sightings of the ‘Owlman’ of Mawnan. In 1977 he obtained photos claimed to be of the Loch Ness Monster which appeared on the front page of the Daily Mirror newspaper. This and his associated ‘Monstermind Experiment’ appeared in other media outlets including The Daily Telegraph and Radio One’s Newsbeat.

Alongside the monster-raising, Shiels continued to perform both as Doc Shiels and as a member of Tom Fools Theatre, and he wrote several plays including Spooks, The Gallavant Variations, Nightjars, Cloth Owl the Winking Curtain and Dr Beak Hides his Hands. One of his plays, Distant Humps, was co-produced by Ken Campbell and co-starred Christopher Fairbank. He also had other magic books published, including The Shiels Effect, Bizarre and The Cantrip Codex.

The events of the 1970s and 1980s were covered in his own book, Monstrum, and in the 1996 book Owlman and Others by Jon Downes.

During this period and in the years since he continued to paint and have exhibitions. He considers himself an artist first and foremost, and his life’s work to be a form of surrealism that he refers to as ‘surrealchemy’.

Exploring Muckross Abbey, Ireland, November 2015

Doc Shiels in one of the “early bars:” John Reidy’s in Killarney, Ireland, November 2015

His daughter, “Cait Sidh,” also participated with his tent shows, as a witch. His spouse was Chris Shiels.

Shiels’ most celebrated published work was Monstrum! A Wizards Tale (2011). This is the background on that work.