New Artwork: Between Worlds

My first finished mixed media painting in Estonia depicts a white stork (Ciconia ciconia).

The substrate is antique lace over wood panel. My process involved attaching the lace to the panel, painting the portrait, removing the lace and altering the coloration of the wood panel surface, and then meticulously re-registering and attaching the lace back on top and sealing it down.

These birds are embedded in Estonian rural life: they're associated with summer farms and considered good luck omens. Storks are also important in folklore, as they accompany souls to the underworld and bring newborns into the world as a part of a cycle of death and rebirth in Finno-Ugric mythology.

This is Between Worlds, acrylic and antique lace on wood panel, 14x14x1.5”, 2026.

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Shelby Prindaville's mixed media lace painting of a white stork.

Arts Itoya 2025 Residency Artwork 3: Blue Hour (藍影)

Painting tanuki (Nyctereutes viverrinus) unintentionally became a multi-year quest, which lived up to the yokai version’s reputation for illusions and light-hearted trickery.

I decided to paint them on the fan-shaped washi paper which I dyed with indigo (aizome) in my workshop in Tokyo in mid-May. Due to the coloration of the washi and the folkloric aspect of tanuki, I chose to paint them in a limited color palette which isn’t completely monochromatic but which has indigo as the key color.

Tanuki are nocturnal, so the English title Blue Hour felt appropriate as the blue hour is a term for the short period of twilight just before sunrise or just after sunset. The Japanese title is 藍影 (Aikage), which means Indigo Shadows.

This is Blue Hour (藍影), acrylic and traditional indigo dye on fan-shaped washi paper, 7.7x15.75”, 2025.