Photo by Ash Daniel
Where: Gallery at 23
When: August 2019
For most of Shaylen Amanda Broughton’s career, she painted representational images. Her grandmother was a portrait artist, and Broughton herself studied interior design at Savannah College of Art and Design because it was practical.
But gradually, Broughton began to paint abstract works, focusing on color and movement. “It’s been a lesson for me to let go,” she says. “The feeling is the same I experience when I’m at the ocean. It’s vast, and it’s so inspiring.” Because her water themes “connect to feminine energy,” she names her paintings for goddesses.
Today, Broughton spends a lot of her time in a 1940s shed next to her house in the West End, creating canvases with blue and turquoise acrylic paint splashing like waves. When Broughton left her job as an interior designer in 2014, she had already met full-time artists who were able to make a living, like muralist Hamilton Glass, for whom she worked as an assistant.
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“Fortuna,” fluid acrylic and Roman bath water on canvas, 18 by 18 inches
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"Oshun,” fluid acrylic and Atlantic Ocean water on canvas, 36 by 60 inches
After painting commissioned landscapes and dog portraits, Broughton says she still felt that, “I wasn’t truly expressing myself,” and she started switching to more abstract, organic work driven by her meditation practice. She and her husband moved to a house with room for a studio, and before long, Broughton had customers asking about her new work.
In her studio, containers of paint in many colorful shades line the walls, and splotches of blues and greens cover the concrete floor. Broughton adds water to the paint, sometimes from the Atlantic Ocean or the James River, which gives the works a “life energy.”
Often, customers give her a desired color palette and canvas size, rather than an exact image, which would be impossible for Broughton to re-create due to the unpredictability of her process. Clients then choose their paintings, and the others go to her gallery shows in Virginia Beach and Richmond.
She also creates murals — including a pink and purple pointillism-style piece at the Diamond — and in April, Broughton was one of just a handful of Virginia artists chosen to work at Pharrell Williams’ Something in the Water festival, collaborating with Norfolk artist Carl Medley III.
Broughton continues to meditate and even has a small loft space in her painting shed lined with pillows and lights. “When you truly dig deep, people connect with that,” she says.
In August, Broughton will have a solo show at the Gallery at 23, 23 W. Broad St.
“Still Loved,” photograph, 11 by 14 inches
Don't Miss: Richmond-based John Plashal, a landscape photographer who documents Virginia’s rural communities, presents a series of images of places offering beauty in decay from his book, “A Beautifully Broken Virginia,” along with other landscape photographs. Aug. 10-Sept. 14, The Gallery at Nest, 3404 Semmes Ave.
