Anne Shelton

Here's the Found Artists exhibit panel text developed for Anne Shelton. 

Anne Shelton made a career teaching in Woodstown, retiring after twenty six years, dreaming of making her own art.  Attracted to painting, she read about a woman in California who decorated greeting cards with dryer lint.  Fascinated, Anne began exploring, and was soon collecting lint and building a file of reference images.  By trial and error she developed a unique method of “painting” – using lint rather than resins.  Nowadays her materials are abundant and cheap, but they’re produced by a mysterious process, the dryer magically selecting and concentrating hidden colors in the fabric -- a beautiful sage-like green, a delicate shade of orange, a gentle aquamarine.  Unraveling the lint, Anne detects latent forms and images already present there; inspired by colors that speak to her, she’s continually drawn into the process of discovery and invention.  Expressive as well as suggestive, dryer lint has found a capable partner in Anne, who contributes creative vision and artistry, resolving details of proportion and perspective as she works through her process.  Supported by the images in her files, Anne delivers canvases that touch the visual, the sensual, and ultimately the spiritual realms.  Hands roving the delicate fabric, she weaves evocative tableaux that open onto another world.