We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Shay Chenette. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Shay below.

Shay, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you wish you had started sooner?

Choosing to be an artist as a career is a risk in itself…then to choose to perform while painting…that is just insane! Or so I have been told.

Hi, I am Shay Chenette, a visual and performance painter on a mission to bring my audience into the creative process through speed painting, live painting shows and events. I have been into the arts for as long as I can remember and professionally since 2015. I am an oil painter at my core but also use mixed media, digital art, acrylics and exploring non-traditional surfaces like wood and metal canvas. A huge life change for all of us, was the summer of 2020, it changed and shaped my current art style. When my customers could not buy toilet paper from empty grocery store shelves, I noticed they were still purchasing the art I was making for fun. I began to take art more seriously and fulfill the need for my customers. I have been making diaspora inspired art ever since.

Sometimes, I do wish I would have focused on art sooner, however I believe all of the challenges, obstacles and life changes have influenced my art so profoundly that it would be hard to replicate if I did not go through those experiences in life. I have spent hours working on the details of a finger, or eye, making sure the shadows are angled correctly, paying attention to tones and values, so on and so forth! This foundation has been instrumental, I have studied the art rules relentlessly… now I am purposefully breaking them.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My art history has been customized products like sneakers, back packs and totes this style gave way to oil portraits and figurative works. At this stage in my creative process, It has become a far more freeing to throw (literally throw) paint onto a canvas and shape it into an image. Speed painting and performance art releases a creativity within me that I did not know I had before. Majority of my commissioned works are for portraits and family portraits, my gallery and collections pieces are for collectors and lovers of African Diaspora themed artwork but speed painting and performance art is just for me and the audience.

I love capturing the viewers and pulling them into the painting experience, creating even more lovers of art in this world. Just for a moment, the stress and worries of life disappear from the crowds face, they laugh they smile and if I execute it correctly they stand and applaud. There is so much value in offering people not just a work of art but a moment of peace. I strive to do this when I perform, each and every time no matter how large or small the crowd is.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Become avid art collectors! You can build generational wealth through art, you can purchase pieces that increase in value which could later be auctioned or even passed down to your grandchildren. This model preserves wealth and history! My top collector and I have decided to expand on this subject and co-write a book exactly about this topic, a step by step process for becoming a collector.

I cannot stress this enough to every client that I interact with. Understanding the connection between community and artist is vital to growing the art industry to new heights. Social media has been a way for artists who may not be connected in traditional art circles to breakthrough and reach the client without a middle man. 20 years ago this was not the norm. This shift in art consumption has taught me that the love and thirst for art is as strong as ever, we (artists/creatives) just have to focus on exposure and visibility to get our work out there to the customers who are looking for it.

You can support an artist when you understand that the audience helps place the value on an artist’s works. Consumers have more power than they think, it is a supply and demand situation many times. As more people become collectors who value the work, it keeps the artists work alive. And he more valuable the work becomes. Support living artists not just the expired ones.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Balance. Balance is an important part of meeting any project or goal but for creatives it is crucial. For many creatives we spend a lot of time in our head, solving problems, and building concepts… it can take us out of the present, the here and now.

I remember being commissioned to make an incredulously large 3 part instillation for an opening gallery in Georgia. I decided to try a new method that I had not perfected working with a very unforgiving medium of resin and woods. For three weeks straight I struggled to bring the design into fruition. Every time I mastered one part of the piece another part fell into disaster. It was a night mare. I barely slept, waking at 4 am to work, staying up late until 2 am some nights. As a divorced Mom, whose co-parent lives in another state, my children suffered, my friends and family suffered, my day job suffered? I suffered.

I chose the wrong scale and miscalculated the timing to have such a tedious piece completed in time. The night before we were scheduled to drive across states to deliver the piece… it was damages when trying to load it onto the truck. I literally sat in the middle of the parking lot and cried. I felt so defeated.
I was unable to fulfill my obligation for the event and I thought I let everyone down. I did not touch a paint brush for almost a month after that. The depression was real!

Looking back at the situation, and replaying a grown woman sitting in a parking lot bawling is actually hilarious to me now! I can laugh at it because I learned the lesson from it. There were at least 8 different ways I could have solved the issues with that instillation. I could not see the solutions at the time because I was off balanced. Lack of sleep, poor eating habits, lack of self-care and poor quality time with friends and family are all creativity killers. A lot of my more recent works have triangles somewhere within their designs, this is intentional. I have 3 main priorities in my life, the triangle reminds me that these three points are my guiding compass and to always keep them in balance.

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.ShayChenette.com
• Instagram: @ShayChenette
• Facebook: Facebook.com/ShayChenette

Image Credits
IG: @Eyecreatereality Cory Moore