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Courtney Sheets is a self-taught mixed-media artist who has worked within many mediums including wood sculpting, jewelry design, photography, collage, drawing and painting. She spent her childhood on a small farm in northern Indiana during analog times. Soon after graduating college, she departed her homeland to explore both coasts and the American Southwest. She began her formal creative studio practice in 2007 while based in San Francisco, and finishing her M.A. in Women’s Spirituality, a degree that encompasses women’s roles throughout history within culture, art, and religion. This is when she began to embrace herself as an artist and shift her gaze more fully to the arts. Her diverse background includes time performing in a boutique circus, co-creating interactive sound installations for art events, making life-cast portraits, and many years as a healing arts practitioner. During the pandemic she became certified as an end-of-life doula and continues to explore death-positive conversations and practices. All these modalities and experiences have influenced her art and support her life as an artist. She has lived all over the country including New England, New York City, Tucson, San Francisco, Portland, Oregon, and the Hawaiian Islands. Her work has been in the publications Origin Magazine, Juxtapoz, and Yoga Journal; and art spaces across the expanse of Texas. She moved to San Antonio in 2019 and works out of South Side Living and Maker Spaces where she assists the g ... view more »
Work Samples (PDF)
MORE ABOUT THIS ARTIST
Artist Style: Street Art: Surrealistic, Symbolic; Visual Art: Abstract, Assemblage, Collage, Contemporary, Documentary, Dream Imagery/Ethereal, Experimental, Landscape/Cityscape, Narrative/Historical, Nature/Wildlife, Non-Objective, Photo-Based Painting, Political, Pop, Portraiture, Sacred/Liturgical Art
Artist Medium: Acrylic; Collage; Colored Pencil; Computer; Drawing Media; Film; Gold Leaf; Photography; Watercolor; Wood
Artist Statement of Work
Tell us about your work (style, approach, philosophy, subject and/or theme):
My art reaches toward the reimagining of history and time, to offer the viewer fresh contexts for seeing an image, icon or language in order to flip familiar narratives and the general accepted order of physical and social realities. The hope is that my work triggers minds to unexplored or forgotten territory through the reversing, re- imagining and rearranging of familiar images, texts and patterns. My style is more of a surreal nature with blurred lines to make the viewer second-guess what they are seeing. It bridges the gap between my imagination and the everyday.
The text-based work of my alter ego Wynn Doe touches on a few pervasive themes that are crucial matters of our time. This particular series is a response to those that have attempted to silence & discredit voices of scientific reason, equality, social responsibility, truth and justice by highlighting language and ideologies that have so often been wielded within politics now and for ages.
While many of my collages highlight heroic women from our past, there is a theme of female & androgynous focus throughout my work in general. I seek to center women, and those who have been on the edge of the center for centuries. My art explores the spaces we exist in geographically, culturally and sociologically, while connecting the threads of common humanity and diversity through the passage of time. These images encourage the viewer to let their imagination to take the reins, and come to their own conclusions.