Monique Shelton.  A national-level athlete and a national level coach of swimming. This is where the discipline comes from.

This work explores the space between control and release where structure gives way to movement, and surface tension holds just long enough before something shifts.

Working in encaustic and mixed media, the layers are built over time and suggest water, atmosphere, and depth, but resist settling into a fixed landscape.  

The materials themselves - beeswax, resin, pigment, burlap, metal, wood - create a balance between fluidity and structure, allowing each piece to exist somewhere between containment and dissolution.

This current body of work, “Ebb and Glow” moves through a cycle:  pressure, descent, suspension, and return. Some pieces hold a horizon or boundary, while others  dissolve beneath it, inviting the viewer into a quieter, more internal space. Light appears intermittently - filtered, submerged, or breaking through - suggesting moments of clarity within a larger field of movement.

This work is informed by a long engagement with discipline and repetition, where subtle shifts over time create meaningful change.  Each piece becomes a record of that process - built, disrupted, and reformed - holding both tension and release at once.