Shelly Sconberg Meredith

Seven Time Art Party Participant • Art Party Supporter

Water Carvings

Artist’s Website

Artist’s Statement

“Planescapes: Found Abstracts and Re-imagined Lands” is a collection of images taken through the windows of commercial airliners.

As an artist, I struggle to create abstract paintings, preferring more representational work. But, as a photographer I find that all the best images work as abstracts. Flight provides a scale to see lines, patterns, and textures that otherwise elude us. A watershed becomes a butterfly wing. Agriculture, a Twister mat. We are not sure what we are looking at; only that it is intriguing and beautiful. This uncertain state invites us to stray from what we think we know—to observe in curiosity, allowing connections and insights to unfold.

While the structures in my images are unaltered, I often intensify colors and contrasts to enhance the magic of Nature’s canvas—to help the viewer imagine the world the way I do.

About the Artist

I spent my childhood days riding horses and running through the hills of a cattle ranch in Salinas, California. When I was ten, my family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where I now live with my husband, two children and a small menagerie of pets. Much has happened in the interim, but unaltered are my early passions for nature and animals, space, rhythm, poetry, balance.

My goal as an artist is to capture the magic that makes a memory. I see such beauty in the patterns, colors, and textures that surround us every day. I delight in finding an interesting scene and distilling it, taking all of the brilliance of a field of vision and condensing it into one dynamic canvas.