Shelley Forsyth recently moved to Quinte West from Canmore, Alberta.  There, she started her business 'Ciao Bella! Murals & Custom Plaster.'  Her business offers drywall taping & repairs, interior painting, interior design, unique wall textures and murals.  An artist through and through, she has used this business to create beauty on a large scale, and to allow her the flexibility and means to create her more time-consuming portraits.  Shelley puts passion and emotion into everything she does; one sees it in her acrylic paintings and on the jobsite.  Passers-by can hear it – her rhythm and energy is infectious.  It takes but a few days at a new construction site and nobody has any trouble finding Shelley, for they simply follow her song as it rings through the unfinished hallways, accompanied by the cling-clang of her knife against the mud pan.

Shelley lives her life with a sense of purpose.  “My relationship with Jesus connects the dots between all the different things I do,” she says.  Believing she's here to love God and love the people around her, she wants to share the beauty that she has experienced with others.  Indeed, she often hears the crew coming to paint her drywall remarking “Your work is really beautiful! ... It's a pleasure to come paint after what you've done.”

By day, Shelley's medium is drywall mud; by night, she uses paint to transform a surface, and occasionally, she combines them into what she calls “modern fresco.”

“Mudding and plastering has added such a cool dimension to my work.  After working in 2D all day long, I can't help but be unsatisfied unless the subjects in my paintings are coming out of the picture,” she claims.

Traditional fresco used powdered pigments to a tint plastered surfaces while they were still wet.  Shelley's process for “modern fresco” is to first hand-apply plaster mud to a wooden panel.  Then, she applies acrylic paint, using various techniques to add depth and detail to the image.  These pieces especially have been a hit among the contractors she has worked with.

After fluidly creating many smooth walls, Shelley found another unique use for plaster.  Combining her skills, she sculpts mud into intricately textured interior room borders consisting of flowers and leaves.  The idea came to her after having spent a year living in Europe:

 “The houses seemed so plain here after returning.  I had to find ways to create character and uniqueness, to do things that I didn't see other people doing.”

Shelley is currently working on a series of paintings depicting a man and a woman, both part of a romance that has yet to develop.  Filled with alternative angles and lots of shadow, they have a mysterious, out-of-reach quality.  She remarks, “I began working on it feeling like I was at the edge of some vast romance; it felt far off, but still very real inside of me.”  Interestingly, Shelley did find that mysterious romance and ended up getting married before she finished the series...  Freshly inspired, look for great things coming from Shelley Forsyth.

Works

Shelley has done many commissions and has work in private collections and institutions in British Columbia, Alberta, Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec, as well as Switzerland, Portugal, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique.

Exhibitions

2001  Strathcona Art Barn  Group Show  Sherwood Park, AB

2002 Edmonton Art Walk  Open-Air Show  Edmonton, AB

2003 Edmonton Art Walk Open-Air Show  Edmonton, AB

2005  Edmonton Art Walk  Open-Air Show  Edmonton, AB

2005  Sherwood Park P.A.  “Fruits of the Spirit” Project  Sherwood Park, AB

2005  Small Gems  Group Show   Canmore, AB

2006   CAAG   Group Exhibition   Canmore, AB

Shelley is 23 and lives with her husband Daniel Vanderbyl, a pilot-in-training in the Canadian Air Force, and they are currently based in Trenton, Ontario.  Shelley Forsyth is the maiden and professional name of Shelley Vanderbyl.

Shelley can be reached at (613) 243-6109, ilike2paint@hotmail.com
http://picasaweb.google.com/ciaobella.shelley/ShelleyForsythArt

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