In high school, Seattle oil painter was the go-to girl for posters and sign painting. In college she studied art but didn’t believe it could be turned into a paying career so she joined her family’s jewelry business. In her late twenties she married and had two beautiful sons.
The next time Shellan picked up a paintbrush she was forty years old. She has yet to put it down.
“After playing hide and seek with art my whole life, I finally found the time and the energy and the sense of purpose to pursue it seriously,” she says. Like many artists, Shellan started with watercolor and after only two years of painting mounted her first one-woman show at a local coffee shop. From there she quickly moved on to galleries, more solo shows, and commissioned work. Over the next eight years she won over a dozen awards and was in over 30 juried shows and attained her signature membership in the Northwest Watercolor Society. In 1998 she and a fellow artist started the Kirkland Artists Studio Tour, which now includes over 60 artists and is sponsored by the Kirkland Arts Center.
But Shellan’s journey wasn’t finished. Something was still missing. “Watercolor is luminous and I love the colors but as a medium it can be excruciating,” says Shellan, who does everything in her life with speed and flair. “Some days I wanted to scream. Watercolor was just frustrating me.” One day she happened upon a demonstration of oil painting in a fresh and loose style called alla prima (a method of painting in which the entire work is completed in a single session).
“I sat there watching and felt myself go weak in the knees,” Shellan recalls.
The next day she gave away all her watercolor supplies and went out to buy oils. “I knew I had finally come home,” she says. “The dense pigment and rich texture of oils express the art that’s always been inside me. In fact, my whole life, when I dreamed paintings they were always oil paintings.”Today Shellan paints exclusively in oil in Seattle and is known for her lush and dreamy brushwork. Her work ranges from landscapes to figures, from still lifes to interiors. Lynn Asmann, owner of the Kaewyn Gallery in Bothell, Washington, says, “Over the years that I have known Joanne and admired her work, I have watched her grow. I believe she has truly found her voice with oils. What rich images I get to hang in my gallery!”
Liana Bennett, accomplished oil painter and teacher for 35 years, says, “I’ve never met anyone who is so open to learning and—and I do mean ‘and’—follows up with that knowledge.”
Joanne Shellan continues to exhibit in galleries, enter juried shows and accept commissioned work. She donates 25% of her annual profits to local charities and donates thousands of dollars a year in paintings to auctions.
“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time,” Thomas Merton
