Elizabeth Selby wanted to remember the moment her therapist said, “I’m really proud of you.”
“It means a lot when someone’s proud of you that’s been with you in it all and seen all the work you’ve done, and where you started, where you are now,” Selby says.
She snapped a picture in that moment, which became the reference for the oil painting at the center of the first piece she completed for her latest exhibit, The Shape of Consciousness, running through Oct. 31 at Surface Gallery.
On View
Her therapist, Georgi, looks out from the piece with wisdom and warmth in her eyes and the slightest smile, emanating pride. An aura of greens, pinks and purples radiates from her while night-blooming lilies made of ceramic grow up from beneath her, and a butterfly made of copper and mother of pearl spreads its wings above her for an assemblage that feels both surreal and down-to-earth.
The 37-year-old artist sees this piece and others in the collection — layering salvaged wood, metals, acrylic and other materials — as both a celebration of her own transformation and an expression of gratitude for those who got her there. Now a practicing therapist specializing in somatic work after going to grad school following her own recent experience in therapy, Selby says the art in this collection draws on her experience as both client and therapist.
“What I’ve learned from sitting with people is how we really are the creators of our own life,” she says. “We can sort of alchemize whatever challenges or pain that we experience … into something better that ripples in the community and in our world.”
Honor and gratitude
Putting the pieces on display feel vulnerable, she says, like letting strangers and family alike “come in and read my diary.”
“I’ve just put so much of myself into it,” she tells SoCo Insider from her home in Colorado Springs, where she lives with her husband, who is also a therapist, and their dog, Freud. “It’s very much me telling a story of the last few years of my life, and what I want my life to be like and look like, and the people that I admire and what I believe about the divine. It just feels like I’ve really left it all out on the field.”
Several pieces in the exhibit honor those who have shepherded her on her way. One depicts a meditative Catholic nun who lives at Benet Monastery, where Selby went through a spiritual direction program. The piece depicts her with a brass halo, praying alongside a wild goose. Another portrays the face of Selby’s mentor in that program, a Protestant woman who met with her weekly for two years, set within a pear and surrounded by quilt-like elements.
“I tried to use symbols that we all would recognize and also that mean something to the individuals that I painted,” she says. “I tried to honor each person’s spirituality.”
As for own spirituality, Selby, who was raised Southern Baptist, says she now “believe[s] in God in a deeper and larger way than I ever have.”
“I see God in everything and everyone and everywhere. And I think where love is, God is.”
One piece pays homage to The Unicorn Tapestries housed at The Met Cloisters, where medieval art incorporating materials like bronze, pearls, wood and jewels inspired Selby’s method for the show on a recent trip to New York City.
A companion piece to the unicorn depicts an alligator surrounded by flowers, an ode to her upbringing in the Gulf Shores of Alabama.
“I think it shaped entirely who I am, and I have a lot of gratitude for that place,” she says.
Selby jokes that her aesthetic hasn’t changed much since kindergarten: an unapologetically loud palette of pinks, purples, hearts and butterflies that she now combines with “beautiful natural materials” reminiscent of her grandmother’s home and the churches she grew up in.
Pieces in this show see the luxe and the ordinary sitting side by side — marble next to vinyl tiling and mother of pearl next to acrylic — fitting together like a puzzle.
“Each piece is kind of representative of life itself,” she says. “One piece in itself may not be that significant. But as a whole, it really creates something, when you stand back, that makes a lot more sense.”
An embodied experience
Though she’s been an oil painter for the better part of her career as an artist, working with a range of materials for this show came naturally to Selby, who says she was raised as sort of a “free-range child.”
“My dad had a huge shop, so he let me play with big saws and sheet metal,” she says. “My mom let me take all these different classes, like pottery, jewelry making. My dad and I worked in constructing things out of metal and wood. So I kind of am used to working cutting random materials.”
The process of creating the assemblages was demanding, but it was also “fun as hell,” she says.
“It’s hard on your eyes, your hands, your grip,” she says. “It’s just a different experience. And I think that’s why I like it. It’s a full body, very embodied experience.”
And it isn’t just the medium where Selby sees a shift from her past work.
“In the past, my solo shows have been a lot of self portraits,” she says. “This is before I went to therapy, mind you. A lot of my self portraits were me in these really, like, depressed poses or hiding … a lot of solitary poses. Alone.”
This show, on the other hand, is anything but lonely.
“I really hope people feel more connected to their own experience as they look at things,” she says. “Who in your life has been someone that’s helped carry you or walk with you, or give you gifts that helped you go along the way? Who in your life has been that? Who would you make an icon of or a relic of?”
