Shelton Walsmith

TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF – WHO YOU ARE, WHERE YOU'RE FROM, EARLY LIFE, WHAT DREW YOU TO ART?

I've lived in Brooklyn, New York since 1996. I left my home state of Texas 28 years ago and have since lived in Santa Fe, Prague, Barcelona and Atlanta. I consider myself a consummate New Yorker and specifically identify with Brooklyn as my true home. That said who I ultimately am is not the one writing this but the entity deeper within listening to me think.

COULD YOU ELABORATE ON THAT?

The Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue said, “I think what happens here a bit is that there’s a reduction of identity to biography. And they’re not the same thing. I think biography unfolds identity and makes it visible and puts the mirror of it out there, but I think identity is a more complex thing… your identity is not equivalent to your biography… there is a place in you where you have never been wounded, where there is still a sureness in you, where there’s a seamlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility in you.”

THAT’S PROFOUND. LET’S CONTINUE TO LOOK INWARDS THEN... WHAT DO YOU LOOK FOR WHEN YOU CREATE AN IMAGE? WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO CONVEY?

The materials that go into a painting are the physical relic of the activity of painting but the materialization is also the launch point away from the fact of the medium and ground toward the ephemeral concept or sensation or non-material spiritual experience of the image. The task is to generate a sense of presence suspended and sustained so that the ‘image’ you mention is a mirage not settling into description or definition but rather liberated by suggestion. It’s not so much to convey to make known or understandable or settle on a legible meaning. The inquiry into images is to convey as to move through the associations an image triggers and transports the viewer out of habitually counting on making sense of things the way you would a map or ‘how to’ manual.

AND HOW HAS YOUR PORTRAYAL OF THESE IMAGES AND YOUR OVERALL STYLE CHANGED OVER THE YEARS?

Experimentation has been my call of duty from day one. I’m not “all over the place" because I don’t know where I’m going. “All over the place” was, is and always will be my destination. My studio is a laboratory of bubbling beakers I go in daily intent on discovering surprises. Several distinct bodies of work are developed and added to over years. Improvisational gestural abstraction is contrasted by work wherein studies and planning yield representational results. When the winter bars me from my freezing studio I work from home contrasting long hours of drawing imagery sourced from junk store snapshots, cinema and the internet with cut and paste collage Frankensteining found imagery into exquisite corpses with an eye to plotting folded Cubist space. I think of myself as a design team of disparate talents working toward a unified goal. We’re not building a single house we’re developing a diverse city. Alfred Hitchcock described style as “self Plagiarism”. Picasso said, “Style is often something which locks the painter into the same vision, the same technique, the same formula during years and years, sometimes during one's whole lifetime.” I tend to agree with both of these assessments.

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IS YOUR FAVOURITE MEDIUM?

A person thought to have the power to communicate with the spirits of the dead or with agents of another world or dimension.

(Laughing) WHY?

Because that’s a really cool talent. I’m only half kidding. Medium is an interesting word. I feel compelled to play with it. The medium is the thing between me and the painting right? The ooze between thought and expression which keep the works from squeaking and grinding. My favorite spatial medium is the middle. My preferred medium temperature is warm. My least favorite medium is social media.

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ART INDUSTRY (IN TERMS OF GALLERIES/ COLLECTORS/ FEES/ TRANSPARENCY, ETC) AND WHERE DO YOU SEE IT HEADED?

Jack Warner of Warner Brothers Pictures said, “The problem with movies as art is that they’re business and the problem with movies as business is that they’re art.” Can we circle back to the medium question? The art world is composed of many facets of society. It’s by people for people and about people. It exists in vacuums on University campuses where pedagogy finds a rich historical platform to communicate our evolving human race. The art world is a vast swaying bridge between antiquity and the unknowable future. The art industry is a subset of a larger intricate filigree of the art world. At their best museums and galleries offer society temples of contemplation. Less interesting, for me at least, is the industry side which crowds gads of objects into convention centers and booths.

I don’t feel inclined or qualified to speculate on the future of the market. It’s putting the cart in front of the horse for me. I prefer to imagine how art can open like a gift in the present scorched earth reality of 2021.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE MOST MEMORABLE PIECES OF FEEDBACK YOU’VE RECEIVE FROM THOSE WHO’VE VIEWED OR PURCHASED YOUR ART?

So many memorable moments over the course of 35 years of making. Long ago it became apparent that generating art was inseparable from generosity, in fact, in the beginning making was gifting without the slightest premonition my DIY daubing would eventually become a prosperous vocation. An imagined audience or recipient of a gift is an informative well spring of inspiration. You know what will spark joy and you manifest with that in mind. This imagination exercise carries over into the work you do for yourself and the world. For instance, as my son went from kindergarten to graduating high school there was copious opportunities to generate art for auctions and giveaways. Such pleasure exists in these endeavors. So much gratitude (better than money) beams back. Over time I looked for ways to give.

When you proliferate an abundance of work you don't want to see it buried in stacks. I love selling it and deploying it beautiful interiors but its an embarrassment of riches to have so much at hand.

Back to your question. Awhile back I gave a painting to a friend. It was a painting based on a montage I made combining covers of 2 vintage magazines; Ebony and The Saturday Evening Post.

Study for Table of Contentedness

Table of Contentedness

After he brought it home his pre-teen daughter was delighted to have a representational painting amidst their collection of abstract pieces. When he told me this I made a painting especially for her. This one was a portrait of a confident young woman with eyes glassy with emotion. When I brought it to my friend’s work place a coworker asked to see it. As I showed it to her she burst into tears sobbing that she was so moved by the depiction of a strong black female. I promised and made her a painting with this in mind. Her spontaneous emotion in that moment was a gift I continue to hold in the same place in my heart where inspiration is distilled. Again, it is great to glean income and there have been countless moments when a sell has been in tandem with a new friendship forming with a collector however in the big picture I’m in this to move and be moved; to be fulfilled financially pales to a spiritual connection with people through art.

CIRCLING BACK TO THE ARTWORLD THEN, WHO ARE YOUR ARTISTIC INFLUENCES?

This list is quite long as it is always evolving due to an expansive appetite for plumbing the history of art and gleaning new incites from my contemporaries. Visible influences; the tendencies that I at least see when I look it my production en masse are Jean Dubuffett, Martin Mull, Cecilly Brown, Joan Mitchell, Frank Bowling and Robert Rauschenberg. A deeper drill perhaps harder to detect without knowing are Chuck Kelton, Philip Guston, Alma Thomas, Francis Bacon, Fairfield Porter, Alice Neel, Eduard Vuillard, Anselm Kiefer and Neo Rausch. I’ve learned a great deal from lesser known contemporary painters Patricia Kaliczka and Lou Ros as well as collage oriented artists Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Titus Kaphar.

Jean Dubuffett	Martin Mull	Cecilly Brown
Anselm Kiefer	Francis Bacon	Fairfield Porter
Philip Guston	Robert Rauschenberg	Edouard Vuillard La Berceuse

ANY ROLE MODELS?

Role model is little more slippery oyster to crack. For instance, I am a lifelong student of Picasso and I hold his work ethic up like a lantern to move forward in the darkness. He was also very generous to younger artists which I emulate but modeling myself on many of his roles as a man is a repugnant rabbit hole to travel down.