Shelly Floyd is a contemporary abstract artist known for her innovative “woven paintings”—a body of work that defies medium by sculpting paint to appear as thread and layering it over mirrored surfaces. Her work explores the tension between perception and truth, softness and strength, illusion and structure.
Inspired by generations of craftsmanship in her family—especially the tactile beauty of her grandmother’s cake piping and floral design—Floyd developed a technique that merges the aesthetics of fiber art with the permanence of acrylic paint. Her signature process involves weaving thick threads of paint into architectural grids that resemble textile patterns, then mounting them onto mirrored panels that subtly incorporate the viewer into the work itself.
Shelly’s practice centers around themes of identity, emotional memory, and the domestic as sacred space. Each painting is a meditative act of repetition, built stroke by stroke in quiet defiance of expectations about gendered labor, materiality, and surface.
Her work has been exhibited in both solo and group shows throughout the U.S. and has become part of private and corporate collections for its bold texture, conceptual depth, and contemporary elegance. Floyd’s pieces have also been featured in design-forward spaces where art meets interior harmony, offering tactile visual moments that anchor a room.
She continues to explore the boundaries of painting, sculpture, and perception from her Texas studio, creating work that both reflects and reshapes the world around it.
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Shelly Floyd creates sculptural abstract paintings by weaving paint over mirrored surfaces. Her work explores perception, identity, and material illusion—inviting viewers to reflect on what is seen, what is hidden, and what is real.