(gentle music) - We're talking a lot of, what, science in your work?

- Yeah, so I'm not a scientist, but I'm a giant nerd, and we watched a lot of sci-fi and, you know, "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" and that kind of stuff when I was growing up.

So I'm really fascinated by space.

I'm really fascinated by science.

You can see that the majority of my oil paintings are outer space and astronomy-related.

And then the portraits are sort of that next stage where even as a young kid, I always wanted to do portraits, and I never thought that I was skilled enough.

In art school, they taught you when you're doing portraits, to try not to start with people that you're very attached to, because you're gonna want to make a very perfect likeness, and it's gonna trip you up.

- Here I am in your, we'll call it fine art studio, because it looks like fine art.

Congratulations on what you're doing.

- Thank you.

- Yes.

So how do you describe your fine art?

- I actually find it really hard to describe my art, because I do a lot of different subject matter.

So I usually call myself a multidisciplinary artist, which generally means you have a lot of experience with a lot of different types of media.

When I went to college, I took lots of different classes like figure drawing and silversmithing.

I never took a painting class.

So as far as the painting, the oil paintings and stuff, I'm all self-taught from within the last five years.

- How long does it take you to do this?

- Too long.

(laughs) - Too long, right?

- Yeah.

That is a really hard question to answer, because I don't always think that I create the work.

Sometimes I feel like the work just comes out me.

So I have had times where I sit down to make a painting, and I've actually been able to finish it in a few hours in one sitting.

Most of the rest of this stuff is not like that.

(gentle music) - As a little one, did you do art?

- Oh, definitely, definitely.

I've been an artist since I was really little.

I think I got really lucky that my parents really encouraged that, and both my siblings were out of the house by the time I came around.

So basically an only child.

Spent a lot of time reading and drawing.

I was a teenager, I discovered comic books, and that kind of lit a fire under me a little bit, seeing what you could really do with art.

- Why the medium of oil?

- So like a lot of folks in 2020, I picked up new hobbies, and oil painting was one of them.

I always wanted to learn oils, and they always seemed very intimidating.

There is something about it where I realize that this is my medium.

So this is my largest painting to date.

It's about five feet tall.

I call it "Venus in Stars Cosmic Portrait," where she's sort of made out of a galaxy.

- [Shelley] Let's talk about starting this from scratch.

- Oh my goodness.

- Do you start with the drawing?

Do you start with a picture of a person?

Give me the way it happens.

- Sure.

The smaller ones, I found Creative Commons portraits online, but when you go to enter art fairs and competitions and stuff, you cannot share the copyright with anyone.

So I had to start making my own reference photos for art if I wanted to enter competitions, or jury shows, and things like that.

So with this one, I took a whole bunch of pictures of myself until I got a pose that worked.

So you take the image, and then you turn it black and white.

I drew just a very basic line.

It's not an outline, but I really treat them as guidelines.

I initially had this taped to the wall, so it was all very flat, and then you tape the transfer up, and you go back over your line with a hard object, like a pencil or a pen.

And then I go through, and one at a time, add the layers.

(gentle music) - [Shelley] Do you name her?

- I did.

I named this one.

I'm, you know, what's funny is that naming my art is the hardest thing for me.

- [Shelley] Is it a must to do in the art world?

- I think so, yeah.

Yeah, in the art world, the art world really wants a story to come with your art, and most of my art does have a story, but sometimes it's so personal to me that it almost seems silly to try to force the viewer to see my story.

One of the things that I really have enjoyed about this when I have been showing more of my art to the public is people's responses.

And I'm really interested in the stories that other people, the stories that come up for other people themselves when they view the art.

- Talk about your use of color.

Here's a striking purple, one of my favorites.

Behind you, again, basic blue.

How do you choose the color?

- I don't usually make conscious choices about the color.

I just kind of go with, feel like I wanna paint in purple today.

Make my choices intuitively in the beginning, and then when I reach a point where I realize that I want to emphasize something or I want to make something stand out, then I will make more conscious choices.

- In your hand, I trust this had an aha moment for you.

- I realized that I was really on to something, I don't know if that makes sense, but the light, the glow, it was sort of accidental.

I ended up looking at a lot of YouTube videos and I bought a James Gurney book called "Color and Light," and then I sort of figured out, oh, this is what I did on accident, and it sort of helped me be able to make actual decisions moving forward on how to create the effects that I wanted to.

This series is about how it feels to be living through a great extinction.

You know about that grief.

Most of the figures in this series are the same.

It's another one where I used myself as the pose reference and most of the figures, they're sort of, they're curled up in the forest on the ground, - [Shelley] Almost in a fetal position.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Really just about that, like, holding on to a little bit of what's left.

(gentle music) - How has Kalamazoo helped your efforts?

- We're really lucky that the Arts Council changed their Art Hop to be, there's no fee now.

Juried shows, galleries, you always have to pay money for them to look at your work.

But I think Kalamazoo is a really vibrant art community.

They really show up when people are displaying their art, and that's really encouraging.

- [Shelley] Is this therapeutic for you?

How's it impact your life?

- Definitely, definitely.

Most of the art that I've made sort of pre-2020, a lot of it was political or about trauma in general.

I had a health crisis about 10 years ago.

I started a short graphic novel about that experience.

I also have started a coloring book about that experience, of dinosaurs, and they swear, and it's very silly.

But when I started oil painting in 2020, I think like a lot of people, I was really seeking an escape from that stress.

I do find that oil painting, weirdly enough, is one of the few places where the political, even processing about things happening in the world, processing about trauma, it doesn't really float up in these.

A lot of it really is just sort of about experiencing color and vibrancy, and sort of an escape.

I really hope that when people see the work, that sometimes they see themselves reflected back to them.

- Congratulations, so keep on exploring science through your art and your talent.

Thanks for you.

- [Annalisa] Thank you.

- Thank you so much for watching.

There's also more to explore with Kalamazoo Lively Arts on YouTube, Instagram, and wgvu.org.

We'll see you next time.

- [Announcer] Support for Kalamazoo Lively Arts is provided by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, helping to build and enrich the cultural life of greater Kalamazoo.