Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1973, Shields has exhibited his work extensively in the United States and throughout the world. His work appears in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Museum of Modern Art. Shields is regarded as one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century. His close friends include well-known artists Chuck Close and the late Roy Lichtenstein. By using methods not traditionally associated with the medium, Shields succeeds in blurring the lines between painting, printmaking, sculpture and installation. An example of this is an installation where he constructed grids of unstretched strips of canvas and suspended them. Shields is perhaps best known for his handmade papers and his works on paper. In “Well, My Dear,” Shields executed this abstract work on homemade paper.