Collection: Dwell-Shelley Mansel

Shelley Mansel has been painting the landscape for over 20 years. She attended UCFV in British Columbia for 2 years in the art diploma program, and continued her studies with 3 years in the BFA program at NSCADU in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Mansel has shown in solo, two person, and group exhibitions in Halifax, Toronto, Vancouver, Whistler and Maine throughout her professional art career. Mansel's works have been reviewed in print and online, and her work has been published in House & Home magazine and on HGTV. She has self published two books and is included in the publication, "from Land and Sea: Nova Scotia's Contemporary Landscape Artists". Shelley was chosen as a marquee artist for CBC's Sharing the View calendar 2012, and in 2021 was a spotlight artist in The Globe and Mail/Aventura Visa Beauty of Travel Series.

Mansel's work are held in private collections in Canada, Germany, USA, France and in permanent collections including St Mary's University Halifax and UBC Vancouver. She has received three NS Creation Grants and a Presentation Grant and has been part of the selection committee for the Nova Scotia Culture Division/Grants to Individuals Program. She was the inaugural Artist-in-Residence at the Annex Arts residency in Castine, Maine and has returned several times as a visiting artist to the program.

She currently lives and works in her home studio in rural Nova Scotia.

The title of this show, Dwell, is meant to suggest two things simultaneously: first, to live in, inhabit, or “dwell”(a house); and second, to dwell upon, as one might think anxiously about a subject (the negative force upon a house). The houses in their tenuous surroundings shift uncannily in an atmosphere of attraction and repulsion, the magic and unreal, the cinematic and the psychological context. The paintings deliver an alluring, comfortable view of home with a foreboding tone of destruction.

The home can be seen as the protagonist, whereas its volatile surroundings, are the antagonists. The narrative of a safe home versus an oppressive force can be recognized as a personal or regional experience, as well as our global or planetary circumstance. Our collective planet is our personal home. The climate crisis, rising sea levels, the housing crisis and the fragility of coastal living are all potential conversations which may spring from this work.