Shelby Shackelford (1899–1987) was an American artist who worked mainly within the art communities of Baltimore, Maryland, and Provincetown, Massachusetts. Her paintings, drawings, and prints were abstract, but not nonobjective. Each of them had, as she said, "a beginning in a visual experience". Early in her career, during a period when many in Baltimore were hostile to what locals called "advanced" trends in art, her paintings were stigmatized as "meaningless stuff". After helping to counteract these local prejudices, she embarked on a long period of experimentation in media and technique, maintaining, as she wrote in 1957, that painting was, "an adventure, a process of discovery for which there should be no end". Critics praised Shackelford for "refinement and sureness of approach and execution", "unusual and amusing arrangements of color and line", "taste and imagination", and "paintings [that] are abstract, well-constructed, with variety of forms, and outstanding color". In addition to making art, Shackelford taught art classes to children and adults, was an active participant in arts organizations, and both wrote and illustrated books that received extensive attention from book reviewers.
Early life and training
Shackelford was born in Houston, Virginia, a community that later changed its name to Halifax. Her father having died before her first birthday, her mother brought her to Fredericksburg, Virginia where they lived with one of his cousins. Shackelford passed most of her childhood in Fredericksburg and at Stuart Hall, a private boarding school for girls in Staunton, Virginia. In 1912, she attended a boarding school in Switzerland, where she learned French and, during holidays, traveled with her mother to see galleries in Italy and Paris. Six years later, having determined to become a professional artist, she and her mother moved to Baltimore, Maryland where she enrolled as a student at the Maryland Institute School of Design, now the Maryland Institute College of Art. She disliked the school's conservatism and its "dull routine" but, nonetheless, won a scholarship there in 1920 and graduated in the spring of 1921. That fall, she exhibited at the Institute with other students. At one point during her years at the Institute, Shackelford spent a summer in the art colony at Provincetown, Massachusetts. There, working under Ross Moffett and Marguerite Zorach, she recaptured her love of painting and recommitted herself to a career as a professional artist. In 1922, she traveled to France to study under Othon Friesz and Fernand Léger in Paris. After her return to the United States, she showed four drawings in a group exhibition of student works staged by the Provincetown Art Association.
Career in art
By 1924, Shackelford had decided to adopt the modernist style she had learned while studying in Paris and Provincetown. At year's end, she showed two paintings in a group exhibition held by the Charcoal Club of Baltimore. The club's annual all-American exhibition is said to have then been "the high point of Baltimore's brief art season" and her paintings were among only 70 works selected from among submissions by 130 artists. A local reporter noted that many "modernist" submissions had been rejected. The Baltimore Sun printed a photo of Shackelford working on one of the two paintings she exhibited. The photo is shown above, no. 1.
Her modernist style caused a minor scandal the following year when the newly-appointed director of the Maryland Institute rejected a solo exhibition of her paintings saying "I am not going to allow modernists to display their meaningless stuff in the galleries of the school and counteract the true art education we are giving." In response to this rejection, Shackelford called together a group of artists and art patrons. Under the leadership of George Boas, a Johns Hopkins philosophy professor, the group set up a temporary gallery, called the Modernists' Art Gallery. In 1925, she held a solo exhibition at the new gallery. A Baltimore critic said the show was, "one of the city's most important art events of recent years." The critic went on to say, "Miss Shackelford's work is important because it is 'alive' because it shows the results in painting of an eager, sensitive and well-equipped intelligence and because, more than the work of any other artist who has exhibited here recently, it succeeds in a combination, a fusing not only of color and line, design and interpretation but of matter and form." A year later, the modernist group reported that it had achieved its goals and closed the gallery.
Shackelford showed paintings at an exhibition held by the Society of Independent Artists at New York's Waldorf Astoria in February 1925, including a self-portrait that a Baltimore critic believed to be daringly modern.
In the early 1920s, Shackelford became a summer resident in Provincetown and began to show her paintings and drawings in the Provincetown Art Association's annual exhibitions. In 1925, she had a painting called "Composition" selected for the eleventh annual exhibition and the following year, she began to show in a new series of modern exhibitions that the association held. In 1927, she showed pencil drawings in the first of the modern exhibits. One of these drawings may have been a portrait of her close friend, Janice Biala In 1928, She exhibited a painting called "Accordion Player", showing a figure said to be "at once vigorous and lax in his posture". Between 1930 and 1936, her paintings and drawings appeared in the annual modern shows and in 1932 and 1933 she was a member of the jury that selected works for exhibition.
Following her marriage in 1926, Shackelford and her husband moved to New York City where he held a teaching position. In 1930, 1931, and 1932, she exhibited drawings and paintings at a nonprofit gallery founded by the wife of Philip Roosevelt and named the G.R.D. Gallery in honor of the artist, Gladys R. Dick. During this period, she also showed in group exhibitions at New York commercial galleries (Macy's Department Store, 1931, and Contemporary Art Galleries, 1933). These shows elicited praise from local critics. One praised a combination of force and delicacy in her drawings. Another called attention to "unusual and amusing arrangements of color and line decidedly well painted."
Shackelford learned printmaking during her summers in Provincetown. In 1930, 1931, and 1932, she had prints accepted for display in the prestigious traveling exhibition called "Fifty Prints of the Year". Sponsored by the American Institute of Graphic Arts, this annual series began in 1925. Each show included prints by both modern and traditional printmakers and the Institute took steps to ensure that the selection process was fair to both groups. The woodblock print, "Othello's Last Scene" (shown above, no. 2), appeared in the 1930 exhibition.
In what may have been her last exhibition in New York before the outbreak of World War II, Shackelford showed prints and drawings in the second biennial exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1936. During the war, she and her husband moved back to Baltimore. In the late 1940s, she continued painting and printmaking and renewed her connections with the city's arts organizations. Beginning in 1946 and continuing into the mid-1960s, she participated in group exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art and regional non-profit organizations. These included a group shows at the Baltimore Museum in 1946, 1950, and 1962; solo exhibitions at that museum in 1956, at Western Maryland College in 1958, and at Johns Hopkins University in 1963; and a special invitational show of seven Maryland artists held in Annapolis by the State Federation of Arts in 1965. Shackelford's painting called "Cliff Wall" of 1956 (shown above, no. 3) is from this period.
In 1957, Shackelford became a member of a newly-formed artists' cooperative gallery—the Jefferson Place Gallery—in Washington, D.C. Her exhibitions at the gallery included eight group shows between 1957 and 1960 as well as a solo show in 1958. Washington critics gave favorable reviews. One said a painting of hers was the "most covetable" of the works shown in a group exhibition in 1958. Another singled out a painting called "Phoenix" in a 1960 group show, noting its "feathery flame-like forms and harmonious colors" and calling it "the show's gem".
In 1960, she won second prize in a competition sponsored by the Baltimore Jewish Community Center, and in 1962 she won first prize in the annual Maryland Artists Exhibition of the Baltimore Museum of art. In 1967, she gave a solo exhibition at Studio North gallery in Towson, Maryland that contained conventional ink drawings along with ones made by mixing soot in water and a year later she showed further experimental techniques in a group exhibition at that gallery. During this period, she also participated in an innovative group exhibition at Baltimore Junior College, contributed paintings to art rental program she had helped to establish at the Baltimore Museum of Art, and showed drawings, prints, and paintings in a variety of group exhibitions at academic and nonprofit galleries.
Shackelford continued to show even after she turned 75. Regarding an exhibition in which she participated with five other artists that was held at the Fells Point Gallery in Baltimore, a critic for the Baltimore Sun wrote, "Shelby Shackelford, in delicate drawings, invests a variety of mineral specimens with mystery and, in the painting, "Part of This Sphere" endows inanimate nature with a feeling of passionate life." In 1982, she was given a solo show of paintings and drawings at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum and in 1985 she participated in a group show at the National Council on Aging. When interviewed about the latter, she said her work had been affected by " cataract operations, arthritis, and two hip replacements". She added, however, that her health had improved and said she was "anxious to work" and was "feeling happier all the time."
Artistic style
Shackelford used a variety of media during her long career. Her earliest works were oil on canvas, graphite and ink on paper, and woodblock prints on paper. Later in her career, she also painted using casein, made wax and paraffin prints, and used soot as a medium in her drawings. In 1956, a critic noted that she liked the ease of handling casein as well as its pure color. "After the medium is dry", this critic wrote, "she uses a light wax finish to produce a preserved and luminous quality."
She made portraits and other figures, landscapes, still lifes, and mixed media.
She was seen from the first as an abstract artist and her work became more abstract as her career progressed but it was never purely abstract. In 1957 she said, "My painting has become more abstract, more concerned with the fact of the flat surface of my canvas and the consistency of my paints. I am not a nonobjective painter, as my canvases always have a beginning in a visual experience."