In 1920, she married a surgeon, Dr. Brian Smith Warner, and traveled in Europe. While living in La Canada and La Crescenta, California, she furthered her painting studies with Nicholai Fechin, Fritz Werner and Paul Lauritz.
The springboard of her professional painting career began with a one-woman exhibition in Hawaii with paintings of exotic Hawaiian flowers. As her fame spread, she has had one-woman shows from coast to coast, including New York, Portland, Oregon, and Oklahoma City.
She spent three summers in New England on Cape Ann, Massachusetts, northeast of Boston near Rockport. Her New England paintings of wharves, docks, boats were quite compelling. A flowery New England critic quipped, "Nell's paintings all but breath the odor of flying spray and the blown spume, each telling interesting stories reminiscent of generations of antiquity."
In 1936, The Christian Science Monitor said of her, " California's flowers allow Nell Walker Warner to continue a work that has acclaimed her America's foremost painter of flowers." Antony Anderson, Art Critic for the Los Angeles Times writes, "Nell Walker Warner is positively one of the ablest painters of flower studies America has produced."
In 1945, she married Emil Shostrom and moved to Carmel, CA where she had been a frequent visitor. She resided in Carmel the next 18 years until her death in 1970.
Nell has received awards and prizes too numerous to mention, receiving 8 in one year and six in another. Her works reside in many public and private collections throughout the United States and beyond. One of her paitings, Cosmos (30 x 36) was purchased by the Lord Duveen Galleries of London, part of the Tate Britain Musuem.
Nell was a member of the Pasadena Society of Artists, the Society of Western Artists, the Carmel Art Association, the Laguna Beach Art Association and the Glendale Art Association. She was quite proud of her work as President of the Women Painters of the West and the substantial fund raised to give scholarships to aspiring young women art students.
