Collection: Young Summer by 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.

Artist Statement

Young Summer is a series of paintings inspired by childhood summers of the 1970s and 1980s. The work draws from memories of endless days spent exploring outdoors with complete freedom and curiosity. Rock pools, damp forest floors, and blackberry thickets evoke a nostalgic sense of wonder, curiosity and discovery. Using an earthy palette of browns, greens and natural tones, this series forms a visual tapestry of remembered summers.

Young Summer invites viewers back into those long unsupervised days where climbing trees, skipping stones, and finding frogs fostered the imagination, a sense of awe, and an enduring habit of close observation. These early experiences of paying attention to nature become a foundation for a lifelong way of seeing.