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Sabrina Shelton


Girl on Horse, 2021
Oil on Canvas



Before, 2021
Oil on Canvas


Orchid Flowers, 2021
Oil on Canvas



Orchid Flowers (details), 2021
Oil on Canvas



Sabrina Shelton

    My artwork consists of studying the human figure, primarily through ballet dancers. As an ex-dancer, I have found myself to have a profound love for the art form, and have continued to display my love for ballet through painting. Although ballet is a painful sport, the real pain comes from being injured and having to watch people continue to do what you love while you are being replaced. Layering on paint makes me reminisce of my time spending countless hours practicing and teaching my body to move in naturally unnatural ways. The beauty of ballet for me was never the extravagant costumes or performing on stage, but rather the accumulation of time and effort that it took to make a move look so effortless. With my pieces, I would like to capture some of this time and the moments that are traditionally unseen by the audience. However, ballet is not just filled with pain, it is also filled with pleasure. The contrast of these two emotions has always sparked my interest because, similarly to painting, being able to persevere through the difficulties of creating art can be incredibly rewarding for oneself. Being able to achieve a certain level of technical excellence in an art form is a cathartic experience for me, which is why through my artwork I generally work with traditional methods in oil. By working with traditional methods, I am able to focus on technique and technical skill, which feels familiar to me.


    My piece, Before, is of a professional ballet dancer putting on her pointe shoes in a ballet studio. This is a raw moment that is normally unseen by the audience, so I wanted to portray it raw with my painting method as well. Generally when I paint with oils, I use a significant amount of layers and colors before I finish a piece. This piece only has 2 layers, my underpainting and the grisaille. Leaving a piece in the grisaille stage is not normal for me, however, I felt that the unfinishedness of this piece and loose brush strokes made this raw moment more beautiful.


    The piece, Girl on Horse, was a piece that I did as a technical challenge. For this piece, I only used three colors, cadmium red light, cadmium red deep, and alizarin crimson. To achieve a range without using black or white was extremely difficult and helped me experiment with color. Red is a difficult color to work with, and also seen as one of the more toxic colors in oil, but is one of the more visually interesting colors to look at. Most of this piece is with cadmium red light, however, you are still able to visually see the scene although it is primarily made of one color. Painting with such a limited and intense color palette made me want to capture a strange subject matter, since this is an extremely unusual way of painting. Therefore the subject matter I chose is a nude woman on a horse in a field.


    Although I do enjoy painting the human figure, I have tried to expand my technical skills and break out of my comfort zone by painting other things as well. My piece, Orchid Flowers, is of two Orchid Flowers where I experimented with brighter and bolder colors. Pink orchids are symbolically associated with elegance and strength, while purple orchids are symbolically associated with admiration. I found this interesting as well because by painting ballet dancers, my pieces also have undertones of elegance and strength.