Daily Inspiration: Meet Shelley Kensler

Today we’d like to introduce you to Shelley Kensler.

Hi Shelley, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
The story is a winding one, but the driving force of it has remained the same — compulsion to live a life guided by learning, expression and connection to the natural world. I am an American painter, ceramicist, and writer with an educational background in psychology, yoga and theater. As an adult I’ve had my creative bases in New York City, Nashville, Mexico City, Alabama and now Los Angeles.

My artistic career was born from making for the sake of making. For the love of the process and what it provided for me therapeutically. My visual art practices, both 2D and 3D, function as avenues for exploration into themes of mysticism, animism, memory, the subconscious and transmutation. Whether working with abstraction, figure, sculpture or function, my goal is most often to evoke a blended sense of recognition and intrigue.

Having a writing practice has provided an alternative outlet to both question and theorize the truths of our secret and shared realities. I spent my early 20’s writing screen plays in secret and have performed original short stories at a number of live events. In 2020, I began writing my first novel and am releasing it serially on Substack starting in February, 2026. Comparatively to my fine art, it feels a bit more dangerous. I’m grappling with themes of spiritualism, womanhood, sexuality and power. Through years of rewrites and with the timely support of an incredible editor (Meg Wade from Tennessee), I’m proud to offer both an entertaining and uplifting book full of grit, reflective inquiry, magic and courage. It’s sort of an anti-romance romance novel with splashes of adventure and fantasy. The title is, THUNDER IN THE BLANK SPACE.

A new chapter of my life is unfolding in Malibu, and it’s one I’d really love to share with a budding community invested in wellbeing and creativity. I am lucky to have access to a large, well lit studio space on top of a hillside with ocean views, and think it could be a perfect sanctuary to host not only my painting practice, but a monthly breathwork class, informative lectures, weekend ceramic workshops, and maybe even the odd gallery show for guest artists. The concept is a bit of a seedling at the moment while property renovations are underway, but I’m looking forward to continuing to nurture its development.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It often hasn’t looked like a road at all. Much of my path has felt like a trailblaze. Not that I’m doing things no one has done before, but rather my process has been and continues to be pursued from a position of intuitive risk taking rather than pre-paved predictability. Sometimes leaps of faith last for a very long time, years or decades maybe. I do my best to keep aim through intention and remain in preparation for the unseen landing. Not every direction I’ve gone has been a fun or fortuitous one, though I’m a firm believer in silver linings and the victory of hard earned lessons. I’ve embraced a number of side quests and have had to make significant lifestyle adjustments in order to remain committed to pursuing the work I feel ultimately called towards.

With so much pain and injustice circulating through our daily lives, hopelessness is a revolving temptation. Joy can start to appear as forbidden fruit — I think it’s really important to reject that. While my creative work is most often the playing field within which I am developing and implementing tactics to examine, disarm and dispel fearful stressors, I have often insulated myself into that process. It has been a struggle at times to show up in community as much as I’d have liked, or as much as would have been beneficial to support, exhibit and connect.

There is a season for incubation, and another for contribution – striking a sustainable balance is my priority. I work to make space for both grief and levity in my own life and in my work. I believe we each have a unique capacity to take meaningful action towards collective liberation and there is celebration and pleasure to be found along the way while holding fast the abundance of beauty, humor and awe intrinsic to this world and ourselves within it.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
My original work, whether its writing, sculpture or painting comes from aligning with whichever avenue leads to a flow state. Meaning, I don’t often feel I have total influence over what it is I’m working on. In the birth of a new chapter, hand built ceramic body, or work on canvas, I seek to open myself to what it wants to be. I am happiest in my work when it feels as though unseen forces are choosing the colors, the shapes, the narrative. This space is where I’ve accrued my skills and seek expansion.

I couldn’t be more excited to share my debut novel, THUNDER IN THE BLANK SPACE, with a serial launch on Substack. It is my most significant project to date, spanning 6 years of development. It’s taught me that total satisfaction with a piece of writing is impossible, because the writer I was when it began feels different than the one I am today. I’ve made peace with my endless desire for it to match my present (ever evolving) sensibilities by embracing its completion as a gesture of trust and reward for my former selves that contributed to it along the way. There’s no way to really know how it will be received, but I’m hopeful it will lead to engaging conversations around self-reflection, romantic conditioning, paths of medicine, and the pursuit of meaning.

As a painter, I started with watercolor and ink illustrations on paper before working with acrylics, oil and natural pigment. I’ve been drawn to interpret images of animals, human figuration and plant life alike. As a horse obsessed child and teen, much of my early skill development came by sketching the equine form, and it’s one that I often return to. Lately abstract painting has been my go-to 2D expression. I am propelled by an urge to capture the familiarity and mystery of the moments between dreaming and waking, particularly after a nap in nature. I am currently drawn to earth tones, opacity and femininity. Blurred patterns of light reminiscent of a lens flare or mythic apparition. Illusions of shape that reflect body, land and spirit. In these paintings, I embark on blind courses of discovery on journeys to recognize and remember.

I started hand building clay 5 years ago. Working in this medium really forces me to confront attachment to outcomes and perfectionism. It also provides the ‘lost in time’ flow sensation perhaps most freely of all my creative outputs, which makes it feel like a safe space. I am currently working on vessels of varying forms to be illustrated with hand painted underglazes. I’ve also recently launched an ongoing line of ceramic creature lamps with brass hardware and walnut bases that are perhaps my most whimsical outputs at present. I’ve practiced outdoor pit firing, crafted mobiles with found objects for a recent show, developed tea sets with hand carved wooden accents, and am entering an exciting new collaboration on larger scale pieces for customized furniture produced between Malibu and Brooklyn.

Commissions have always been a part of my professional curriculum – spanning from illustrations, murals, site specific work, abstract paintings, textiles, and sculpture. I enjoy working with businesses and personal endeavors alike.

Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
Make the art that you want to live with. Stretch your ideas. Work with the materials you have access to. Experiment with different mediums. Absorb all forms of human craft and notice what tugs you towards it. Don’t box yourself in, cross-train. Write the poem or story that would’ve fortified a younger you. Spend time alone and outside. Journal. Ask for help and be willing to lend a hand. Be kind and gentle with yourself and in the world, as much as is possible. Aspire to make work that is interesting, not perfect. Create with an exploratory mind. Become a beginner again and again. Find a teacher (or better yet, teachers) you admire and invest in your relationship with them. You may be a self-taught painter and have an incredible karate instructor – that counts. Utilize information available on youtube. Go to openings and events related to your field of interest. Work for someone further along whose craft you admire.
Share your work online and in whatever ways are available to you. Be relentless and rest with intention. Ask yourself who you are, and why you’re here. Let the answers direct you.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.shelleykensler.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shelleykensler
• Other: https://substack.com/@shelleykensler

Image Credits
Elena Kosharny, Rosana Holsch