Artist Spotlight: Shelley Wallace

Hello, all! Welcome back to the blog. I am here with another artist spotlight! This week’s featured artist is Shelley Wallace. I had such a wonderful experience working with Shelley over the last few months as she worked on the cover art for my book, Little Bird Woman. Originally from Scotland, Shelley now lives in Mexico. We met in a creative community hosted by artist Sarah Shotts. When I first saw Shelley’s artwork, especially her drawings of trees, I was in awe. So you can imagine my thrill when she agreed to do my book cover. We corresponded over the course of a few months, collaborating on ideas for Little Bird Woman’s book cover. The final piece is more stunning than I could have asked for. It was such a joy to work with Shelley, and I am excited to share our interview with you today.

Tell us a little about yourself and how you most like to use your art in your life.

I’ve recently returned to painting after a long break and found I’m more free to express myself in abstract painting than the realistic painting I did before. Painting has become my main focus but I draw and do collage work too. I also write lyrical creative nonfiction but this part of my creative practice is resting while I concentrate mostly on painting. Having a couple of my pieces of my work exhibited in a recent haiku comics exhibition has prompted me to bring haiku comics back into my creative practice again too. Being a parent, I have less time for art so I’m trying to find ways of integrating art with life so there’s not so much of a separation - but I’m still figuring out how to make this work.

What has been your biggest inspiration for your art?

I’ve always been entirely at home and in a state of awe in an art museum. Actually, that goes for any kind of museum. This, and books - many, many books - have long been my inspiration. There were no family artists around but I was always drawn to art, and was often taken to the library and museums as a child - with art, history, anthropology, memoir, and nature, there was no shortage of inspiration. I’m doing a class at the moment around aspects of abstract painting and one assignment had me collecting images of textures, colours, and visual elements I found inspiring, and what was fascinating was that they all came from the wild Scottish landscapes of my childhood that I was free to roam about in and explore.

What is inspiring you most at this point in time?

Anything and everything I can find on contemporary and past female artists. I’ve been reading Ninth Street Women, Fierce Poise, Art Monsters, The Mirror and The Palette, The Baby on the Fire Escape, The Other Side, and The Story of Art Without Men. I’m also working on connecting with and listening to my own intuition and that involves finding and bringing the inspiration out from deep inside me. In the painting class I’m learning to do creative play - this is all about following what feels good in the body and it’s so valuable to explore embodied art making after spending so long being all analytical and intellectual about it.

How do you keep your creative practice fresh?

I am curious by nature and I’ve learned to listen to my intuition and follow my curiosity. I didn’t used to do this and that’s when I got stuck and stale in my creative practice. Now that my curiosity leads me, the problem is more about being selective and focused as there are so many fascinating rabbit holes to fall down. In the past couple of years I’ve also embraced creative experimentation (it took a lot of work to shift my perfectionism) and working in this way allows for accidents and surprise. I used to want to plan every detail and layer in advance but now I can’t think of anything more restrictive - in fact, when I used to draw and paint in this way my body was small and tight. Moving into creating more intuitively and experimenting frees up the body’s movements and it feels so good I’ve recently moved into working large-scale. I’m lucky that my curious nature will always have me exploring new things, I just needed to learn that it was okay for me to follow it intuitively and not try to control it or force it to fit what I thought it ought to be doing.

What words of wisdom would you give young creatives?

Listen to your intuition. Find a way to do your art and don’t get persuaded out of it like I did - it took me a long time to get back to it. Now I know how creating inspires, fulfils, energises and relaxes me. I definitely missed doing art and writing, but I did find ways of sneaking it in, like studying the History of Art and reading so many books on how to do all sorts of art and creative writing. Try not to get caught up in perfectionism - the beauty is in the imperfection and the free and full expression of you. Try not to compare yourself to others and focus on experimentation and finding your own way of creating. Yes, there’s plenty of technical stuff to learn and practice but it needs to be the true (and brave) you behind it all.

Connect with Shelley:

https://www.instagram.com/shelley.wallace