Native to Denver, but a student of many locales, Shelley Irish’s work breaths the air of memory and participation. She works mainly with oil paint and attempts to bring a metaphysical sensibility to all her work. Her goal to be a professor started at the University of Denver where she received a BA in Studio Art and International Studies and that goal continues as she works towards her Master of Figurative Painting. She has had the opportunity to take classes in Italy and mostly recently, Paris, where she was lucky enough to become an official copy artist of the Louvre Musée in the summer of 2006. Shortly after she started offering private oil painting lessons to one student, her dad. Irish finds that these experiences have greatly enriched her work but her industry background has just as much influence. She worked as a cake decorator for over 10 years and still takes wedding cake commissions. She has her first Reiki certification and has been doing chakra clearing for friends since she was a teenager. She runs an annual children’s art auction and sits as a Board Member for the local non-profit, the Child Rescue Foundation. Artistic and not, all of these experiences culminate into one mode of her will; to always capture the energy and aesthetic of now, even in fragment - to ensure it’s sanctification, and to be blessed always with surface and the means to mark it.
