Shelley Thorstensen's Homepage

Shelley Thorstensen has expertise in all printmaking techniques, specializing in hand pulled color multi-print media. Her work is part deep personal archive, part printmaking evangelism, woven together in fabric of color, metaphor and commentary. Art critic Edward Sozanski wrote of her work “The ease with which she combines these processes and exploits their individual strengths gives her prints uncommon presence and, more often than not, transcendent beauty”.

Shelley Thorstensen states, “My work is a result of the confluence of inner and outer stimuli. It’s a result of personal narrative as much as observed affect. It derives as much from experience as it does from answered and unanswered questioning. I think about the connection between the manmade and what we call natural and the extension and overlap of each modality. Sometimes in my work, things are sure footed, sometimes less so. The forms evolve, they turn and I rely on a sense, for which I cannot always find a proper name, to hesitate the turning, to coalesce a given form. The Sufis, grounded in the ecstatic fragility of daily life, call the turning Zikr, the call of the heart, the way of remembering. The hesitation helps me to stay grounded in what is often called the Unified Field. These meditational practices give me the best ability to get at meaning. This is how I ultimately make my way in the world and in my work”.

Shelley Thorstensen in other words