Mixed media artist, Shelli Walters, opens her August show at Tumalo Art Co, August 7, from 4-8pm during Bend’s First Friday Gallery Walk.
Shelli has turned her life-long passion for art and design into a 20+ year career as an art director and graphic designer — and more recently into contemporary fine art painter. She has been a Bend resident since childhood and has been a member at Tumalo Art Company since 2014.
A Wolf’s Garden is a collection of mixed media paintings she created over the past 8 months — a time of soul searching, reflection and choices. It is in this space she connects with nature and meets the messengers, muses and guardians who deliver answers, inspiration and direction.
The paintings are a comingle of paint, typography, pattern, sketch and texture. Shelli uses acrylic paint because it dries fast and allows her to work quickly and stay immersed in her painting. All pieces are on gallery wrapped canvas which she loves for their minimalist quality. Shelli initially covers the entire canvas with collage to create rich underlying texture. This also offers subtle detail that is either pushed back or allowed to show through. After covering the canvas the surface is tinted with a unifying red that symbolizes life, earth, passion and love. The painting builds as she alternates layers of bold color and more subtle collage, delivering a sense of joy and empowerment as well as quiet reflection.
Tumalo Art Co. is an artist-run gallery in the heart of the Old Mill District in Bend, Oregon. Open 7 days a week! 541-385-9144.
Sarah B. Hansen will be teaching an online workshop through the Northwest Watercolor Society April 24-25. Energetic Acrylic: An Expressive Approach to Landscape Painting in Acrylics, will be from 10am-4pm
Kerrie Moore writes about “A Sense of Place” for Uppercase magazine, issue 61, April/May, inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe, who found “her place” in New Mexico in the 1940s. She interviews