April 12 - 30, 2025
From 500X:
“About the Artist:
Shelby Lancaster (b. 1995, East- Central Texas) is a mixed media artist, studying drawing and
painting at the University of North Texas. Lancaster’s work is a means of finding/manipulating the material that best suits their desire. With a preference for texture and material development; soft sculpture, found objects, and natural components are reoccurring elements in their body of work. Lancaster is currently working through themes of spirituality, grief, and preserving ideas of connectedness with mixed mediums and varying substrates– their work is achieved using methods of retraction, staining unprimed surfaces, acrylic washes, and drybrush techniques.
Lancaster has exhibited throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex including shows with Arts Fort Worth, Fort Worth; Friends Co., Denton; Anna St. Studios, Denton; 500X Gallery, Dallas, and group shows within the CVAD department at UNT. Lancaster is a believer in the human experience and showing up honestly through her work, allowing space for vulnerability and intuition to take forefront.
Statement from the Artist:
In May of 2024, my mother passed away. I often view this space for others as profoundly painful and private. For me, the loss of my mom has been both tragically beautiful and inspiring, it has significantly opened my heart to a new presence and methods within my making. This body of work serves as a capsule of fantasy, death, and natural transitions.
As an honest maker and seeker of vulnerability, my only goal for this work is to be present, to
revel in the sorrow and to share the journey of loss, offering my heart to those who share this
universal experience. My process includes a method of listening; there is an invisible line that connects my heart to my head, where my work and I converse. In this space, I consider my materials and how they communicate with my subject matter.
Primarily, I work with drawing and painting practices, using acrylics for solid colors and staining of the surface, then often layering oil pastels, chalk pencils, and charcoal for visual texture and depth.
Growing up in wide open spaces, under vast skies, and in close connections with animals,
symbols of the horse, nature, and spirituality have become integral to my work. The horse holds a personal connection to my mother and is a symbol of my childhood and life back home.
Through my experiences with horses, I’ve learned about honesty, presence, and the profound sense of divinity that they embody. These lessons find their way into my work, where I seek to capture the real and intangible– the grounds that connect us to something larger.I am enamored with the investigation of self; my practice is intentional and I hope that my human finds way of connecting with yours. I invite you to ponder, to wonder why, to investigate what death can be or has been for you. I have held closely the real-life experience between my mother and I only finding myself now, dancing in her smile, laughing amongst her ghost, and being so grateful for how beautiful of a mother she is.”
711 North Britain Road
Irving, 75061 TX
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