(Left) Be Still; (Right) Be Wise. Shellie Lewis Crisp, artist
By Emma Castleberry
Shellie Lewis Crisp has been represented at Red Wolf Gallery in Brevard since she created her first five works of art. In all of her ethereal work, Crisp focuses on faces. “As far back as college, where I studied and earned a BFA at the College of Charleston, I would sit and find faces in my abstract series,” she says. “Although faces were not the subject I pursued, I now realize they were always there.”
Shellie Lewis Crisp, artist. Photo by dk gallery
After college, Crisp stepped away from painting until 2001. “After the World Trade Center collapsed, I experienced the first of many separations in my first marriage and I was living alone with my two boys,” she says. “It was during this time I immersed myself back into art and began painting in a more meaningful way by using women as subjects in my art.” Crisp used painting these women as a way to sort through her grief during three more separations and eventually a divorce. “For me, making art is personal and a means to discover, self-reflect and escape,” Crisp says. “When I paint, which isn’t all the time, I am living in the now and in a state of awareness of self. My faces are a visual journal of me. These faces help tell the story of my life. Some are sad and not so perfect or pretty, but they each tell a truth and have a voice.”
Crisp’s faces have continued to appear as she moved many times, using a basement, a trailer or even a corner as her studio space. “It was for my survival to have a space to create,” she says. “I am happily married now and my husband and I have just recently bought an old home built in 1874 that sits on three acres and also has two old red barns. They all need lots of love and it will take time, but it is here in this beautiful place that I plan to set up my final studio in one of those barns. This is a space I have dreamed about for a long time and feel blessed to be where I am.”
Crisp’s work can be seen at Red Wolf Gallery at 8 East Main Street, Brevard.
