Photography

Shel has been a photographer in the making from a very early age. Her father, a photographer who worked for Kodak, shared his craft with her. Together, they would take hundreds of photos, evaluate them, and then eagerly start working on another roll of film.

Today, Shel’s paintings transform the vast horizons, mesas, sunlit flatlands, and rhythmic oil fields of southern New Mexico into bold, abstract compositions. Drawing from the contrast between natural beauty and industrial form, each piece captures the movement, color, and energy of the high desert and the Southwest’s iconic landscapes.

Her abstract paintings are deeply rooted in her travels across New Mexico, where the land tells its story through light, texture, and form. The southern reaches of the state — with their endless horizons, sunbaked flatlands, and sprawling oil fields — leave a lasting imprint on her work. She is drawn to the juxtaposition of the natural and the industrial: the steady arc of the sun over sagebrush plains, the rhythmic motion of pumping oil derricks, and the silhouettes of iron structures punctuating the skyline.

In her compositions, these elements become distilled into color, line, and movement — evoking the heat rising from the earth, the geometry of man-made forms, and the vast openness that both humbles and energizes.

These are some of the photographs that continue to inspire her recent art.