Artist’s Statement and Biography

Anton Chekhov said “Medicine is my wife and literature is my mistress” This quote fits me also , if you substitute painting for literature. Through my childhood and early adulthood I would frequently draw and paint.  Although the intellectual excitement of science, biology and medicine occupied me for five decades, it did not extinguish my activities in the visual arts. While at Jefferson Medical School and Hospital  in Philadelphia ( six years), I took courses in drawing and painting at the Fleisher Art Memorial (at night) and upon moving to Baltimore in 1974 I studied privately with the MICA trained artists, Carolyn Harader Blaisdell and Glenn F. Walker.  

Artist’s Statement;

I am a figurative painter with roots in the German Expressionist movement of the 20th century. Particularly, I have been influenced by the paintings of Der Blaue Reiter and Die Brucke group.  To gain emotion in my paintings I rely on my fantasy life and dreams to create figures and content.  This results in distorted figures and very primitive content.  The power from these personal paintings come from tapping into my most primitive self. I humorously call myself an “id painter”.

My website is     shelleyamsel.com

A video of myself in my studio can be seen on Youtube.com – typing in shelleyamsel