SHELLEY PALEY
Professional Art Therapist, & K-12 Arts Educator, & Art as Therapy Facilitator
Learning and Connecting through Art! A glimpse inside K-12 Art education at Fox Creek School with teacher, Shelley Paley. Read more
https://www.ngps.ca/about-us/news/post/learning-and-connecting-through-art-at-fox-creek-school
Painting and sculpting the natural world have grown into meditative processes for Shelley Paley. The Alberta rivervalleys and forested areas are her favorite places to ground into mother nature. They are places she goes to relax into the quiet and actively listen to sounds of nature. In these liminal spaces she is compelled to move into intuitive art journeys of expression. Shelley's art making ebbs flows between spontaneous art expression and leaning into acquired art skill. When the art process feels resolved the meditation is complete.
Ceramic sculptures begin from photographs, sketches, paintings, and imaginings. Her animals are often originally depicted as solitary abstracted forms that can then be used to construct other drawings and or groups of spirits together in more personally constructed clay scenarios, some of these scenarios move back into to her paintings. There is something very therapeutic about working with mud. Sculpting is when you will often find Shelley giggling while immersed in the flow. Glazing and kiln process work provide another magical element of release, where the maker must let go of the work, surrendering it to glazes as they chemically react during the firing processes.
Shelley’s art making process continues to open up to new ways of creative exploration using spontaneity and intuitive guidance with focus on process rather than product. Leaning into her personal mindful self-compassion practice Shelley empowers herself through the process of intuitively creating eco-art installations and mixed material 3-D pieces. By installing these works in nature, Shelley is able to let go of that stagnant energy stored in her body. Shelley has shared that she could feel the energy move down her body and into the Earth. Using art processes as both a conduit and a witness in a safe therapeutic relationship creates a spaciousness inside one's self and a new embodied awareness.
Shelley is a neurodivergent woman and card carrying member of the 2SLGBTQIA+ family, with interests in working with humans moving into their second half of Life, facilitating the client's development of a personal art practice as their ritual, adult mental health and wellness, and grief and trauma work with adults.
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Shelley’s enthusiastic about using both Clay Field therapy and bilateral art making as two more powerful ways to engage both sides of the body in communication and healing.
For Shelley, art has always functioned as a conversation with self, and Art Therapy is developing the opportunity to use Art making in counselling. Shelley employs artmaking in therapeutic relationship as a powerful and interactive resource or conduit for introspection and growth.