Shelley has been drawn to the arts her entire life, especially the visual arts and dance. She was encouraged to teach an art lesson to her fourth grade class and loved sharing her skills with others. This likely set the stage for her to eventually make a profession of teaching art and practicing art therapy. A life-long commitment to studio work has been the enduring constant, always leaning toward a non-representational genre but holding value for the practice of figurative and landscape. Shelley says: “My works are strongly influenced by the Asian tradition of art philosophy and brushwork. It is simply the beauty of the brush stroke itself that appeals to me. With paint I investigate ‘movement and not form’ and ‘gesture and flow’.”