Bio

​Shaleen Garba is a contemporary artist based in Atlanta, GA, who communicates her art through the language of color, organic shapes, and expressive mark-making. In addition to traditional brushes, she uses pallet knives, spray bottles, or her fingers to help scratch the painted surface. She continues to explore her relationship with paint and the various tools she uses. It's a never-ending journey of humility, confidence, and gladness. 

​Garba wanted to be an artist from a young age, as evident in her third-grade autobiography homework back in 1994. She attended the Academy of Art University, concentrating in fine arts. And through much trial, error, and perseverance, her style emerged as colorful and joyous, intuitively playing with shapes that renders a smile. Influenced by Pablo Picasso's Rose Period, Garba uses cheerful orange and pink hues to show play and lightheartedness. For Garba, making art is an essential, emotional declaration when words won't do. ​

Her work has been displayed at the Atlanta College of Art in Atlanta, GA, New York City's Times Square billboards, the Sewell Mill Cultural Center and Serendipity Labs, Atlanta for her solo exhibitions, Yonkers, New York, the M.A.D.S. Art Gallery in Milan, Italy, the Art 4 You Gallery in Dubai, and many juried shows.  ​
www.shaleenart.com

​Artist Statement

Shaleen uses the intuitive use of bold brushstrokes and shapes on top of delicate layers that pay homage to life's jubilance. The color choices in her paintings create energetic work that mimics a celebration! The abstract compositions are not precalculated but are organically formed as paint, pencil, oil stick, and water are applied to the canvas. ​These varied applications allow fine lines, saturated fields of color, or blurred pools of diluted pigment to dance across the surface.

She wants to create liberating and purposeful work that brings the emotion of joy and allows anyone experiencing the piece to look at the seemingly haphazard marks and understand its beautiful reason for being there. Shaleen endlessly searches for beauty and reasons to rejoice in each brushstroke.