Featured Artist

GAGE SHETTLER

 

Gage Shettler was born on July 10, 1998 and raised in Milford, Michigan. Gage participated in a suggested art program where painting became his medium. His grandmother purchased him paint and tools and he started painting, first there was ten paintings over three years until periodically an explosive burst of creativity has led him to painting every single day. He uses painting as an outlet for his energy and to focus his thoughts. Like most creative individuals he has found a his own outlet to assist with brain-wellness.

 

"When I paint, something really magical happens. It takes me away."

 

Gage's technique takes canvas and applies acrylic paint to it through a combination of fan brushes, pointer brushes, and metal scrapers about a foot long that he uses to scrape the paint across. He calls his technique "scripting", painting over the canvas with a brush or using the scraper to go across the top like a cake-decorating spatula. As he goes slowly across the top he begins to apply light or heavy pressure with the amount of pressure allowing him to develop multiple perspectives into the work. More pressure yields more light, less pressure yields darkness. He sees things in pattern with a very geographic focus, but leaves his body of work to speak for itself without the need to guide interpretation.

 

His work often defies easy categorization. Some might call it outsider art, some might see it as a merger of abstract and figurative expression, but for Gage he simply wishes to step out of painting conventions and intuit what he sees through his lens. Gage doesn't sign or name his paintings, as he wants people to appreciate the work for what it is, irrespective of who the viewer thinks the artist is or what they're about. Some of his work is inspired by visions he gets from dreams and some of it is inspired by things he sees in the hypnopompic state, the time when the body is in between being asleep and being awake when hallucinations become the most real. For Gage, everything is deliberate and everything is there for a reason, even if it was initially an accident. If he sheds a tear into the work as he paints, it is mixed into the piece. Gage continues to paint every day, creating an impressive body of work for an untrained artist that continues to grow.

 

UNTITLED

Gage Shettler

Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Size: Varied 

Circa: 2020-2021

Range: $1200. - $4800.

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