14 December 19 - 25, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Drawing a Following Dallas pop artist Tyler Shelton is creating a community of support through Instagram. BY DIEGO HERNANDEZ D allas’ Tyler Shelton has been immersed in art. At 29, it’s the only life he has ever known. Growing up with an art teacher for a mother, Shelton participated in a variety of different art proj- ects they did together over the summers. He settled on painting in his senior year of high school after coming to the realization, he says, that he was “not too bad at it and no- body else did it. “It was always instilled in me since I was a kid to make something — not neces- sarily art, but to use my time to be cre- ative,” Shelton says. “It made me feel good as a kid, and it makes me feel good as an adult. Like, I’m being productive and not just wasting my time.” For Shelton, painting was more than a creative outlet. It became a way to connect with himself and the world around him. Shelton has since turned his passion into a business, establishing himself as a rising pop painter in Dallas with works that have garnered a growing audience on social media. “I’m usually pretty fucking shy or I like to keep everything close, but painting is the only thing I don’t have to be that way,” Shelton says. “I can show you what I think is cool or how I feel or anything without the feeling of awkwardness or like it just doesn’t matter. I guess that’s why I like to paint; it’s so freeing [and] it helps me learn about myself also.” Following his high school graduation in Tyler, Shelton spent a year attending two ju- nior colleges. He pursued general studies, a field that allowed him to experience various subjects and disciplines. At 19, he discontin- ued his pursuit of higher education, recall- ing he was “just so bad at college.” Having returned to painting, Shelton spent countless hours immersed in the craft purely as a passion before turning his art into a business at age 20. He created the In- sta account he still uses today (@shelton- artco) to promote his work, and with the support of his mother, who allowed him to stay with her until he was 24, no financial barriers prevented him from fully pursuing his business. Moving out of his mother’s house “right after the pandemic,” Shelton found himself “broke as hell” until 2021, when his business started to take off. Last September, he had his first “legitimate” collaboration, he says, with Thread Wallets after being invited by Lucas Beaufort along with two other artists to go to Utah. “We all went out to the headquarters of Threads and we made paintings and then we made the product line,” Shelton says. “We were there for a week and we all worked together. It was super fun.” Shelton says he is looking to get involved in more collaborations in the future and hopes to “climb the ladder” as an artist. Finding inspiration from music, Shel- ton began his business painting portraits of rock stars until he realized his clients were “not 50 years old” and there weren’t many sales. “I decided to try to be more ... not artistic, but still do more of my own narrative with my own ideas,” Shelton says. Shelton settled on an art aesthetic that he describes as illustrative and what he be- lieves musician Mac DeMarco’s songs would look like. This style, Shelton says, oc- curred naturally. “A question I get a lot is like, ‘How do you find your style?” Shelton says. “There’s really no answer to it besides experimenta- tion and picking and choosing things that you really like and combining them with other things that you’ve picked and chosen in the past.” When he finds songs that resonate with him, he envisions colors of what the song would look like. The melody, the lyrics and every detail that Shelton hears factor into this. “The perfect balance of certain colors gives me the same feeling as like a really dope song,” he says. Shelton’s passion for music goes back to when he was a child and would watch his brother play in bands. He purchased his own guitar at 18 but never followed in his sibling’s footsteps to join a band, saying, “It never went anywhere.” Despite this, Shelton created and re- leased three songs on Soundcloud under the name Lady Finger. His most recent song was released four years ago. Shelton says when he feels burned out or when he wants a break from painting, he listens to music and plays guitar to find in- spiration. “I love music. It’s just something to do to pass the time,” Shelton says. Despite his 160,000 followers on Insta- gram and painting as a full-time career, Shelton still opts to buy “the cheapest” acrylic paint. “Once I started making money, I was like, ‘I’m going to try to make time using a higher- quality product,’ and I hated the paint,” Shelton says. “So I went back to the cheap paint because it dried so matte and kind of adds to the texture I use.” To add his signature texture, Shelton uses a card to scrape the paint in one di- rection, which he finds helps it dry faster. Inspired by screen printing, Shelton also scrapes using a screwdriver “really fast” to get a fine line on rare occasions. He occa- sionally mixes tiny gravel increments into his paint, then brushes it onto the canvas. “The first time I did that was when some- body gave me someone’s ashes just to make some of the paint, and it was coarse,” Shel- ton says. “It was kind of weird, but I was like, ‘That’s pretty cool.’” Before starting any painting, though, Shelton spends anywhere from two to seven hours sketching the design on his iPad. During this time, he focuses on the composition and other factors. Following the design, Shelton gets to work painting, rarely choosing to deviate from the origi- nal design other than just a light color change. Having received recognition in the form of commissions from musicians and celeb- rities — the most recent one TikTok-fa- vored singer Stephen Sanchez — Shelton hopes to continue to build his reputation. As his career continues to evolve, Shelton reflects on how his paintings started as art projects with his mother each summer be- fore becoming his everyday craft and iden- tity. Sometimes, he’ll pull out his older works, lay them out on the bed and examine each one. “It’s like a diary,” Shelton says. “When I look at one of those paintings, I almost know what I did. It makes me feel cool. It’s a reference point for my life and it’s some- thing to look forward to.” Jaci Huckeba Tyler Shelton’s distinct illustrative pop style and texturizing techniques have earned him a large fan base. ▼ Culture SCAN TO ENTER TO WIN TICKETS
