Bio
Shelly is a mixed-media artist, raised in South Africa, of Israeli origin and now working from her studio in London. She completed a Law degree in South Africa and is a self-taught artist who turned her attention to painting, after a career in the City of London.
As with her multicultural origins, her paintings explore a process of mixing unconventional materials together to produce surfaces of shimmering colour. The artist is also drawn to explore the line between painting and sculpture, rendering some of her paintings with three-dimensional elements. Her process-intensive paintings are reductive in nature, exploring elements of colour, materiality and intimacy and are a response to processes of internal enquiry and external visual influences derived from her environment, fashion and social media.
Shelly has sold paintings locally and internationally to private collectors. She has produced numerous commission pieces and has collaborated with curators and interior designers such as Kelly Hoppen. She has exhibited in group shows as well as in Art Fairs such as The Affordable Art Fair, Roys Art Fair and The Other Art Fair. Her work has been been featured in publications and online exhibitions.
Statement
Shelly works with an innovative layering process of spraying thin veils of automotive paint over a glitter and pigment primed canvas. As the spray hits the substrate, the colour fuses with the glittering particles beneath and the surface is transformed into a bed of colour, light and shine.
There is a certain unpredictable alchemy which occurs when the paint and particles bond. Much experimentation with different fabrics, colour and types of flake is involved to determine and evolve the impact of the particle-laden ground on the paint.
A delicate balance emerges between colour and shine. This inherent surface tension imbues the paintings with a delicate nature, which Pamensky believes establishes a sense of intimacy with the viewer.
Some paintings are transformed into woven version of themselves. The entire painting is removed from its bars and hand-cut into strips which are then reconstructed into fringed and woven versions, sometimes combining two or more paintings.
The weave wraps around the edges and extends beyond the frame of the painting rendering it three-dimensional. This laborious process of reconstruction transforms the two-dimensional painting into a three dimensional one straddling the line between painting and ornament.
The surface created whether woven or not is immersive, as is the creative process, which instills in her a deep sense of purpose. There is a feeling of slowing down in the manual processes which pervade the visual aesthetic of the paintings imbuing them with a sense of calm in antithesis to the frenzy of the outside world.
