SHELLEY ADLER's ART
For some time now, the art world has been enthralled by Cinderella stories about hot young artists who win the Turner Prize, sell their entire grad shows to the Guggenheim, wind up on the cover of Artforum, that sort of thing. By comparison, traditional scenarios about perfecting one’s craft or finding one’s vision over time seem as outdated as plot-lines in a 900-page Russian novel.
For the Toronto artist Shelley Adler, the slow track is what it’s all about. At 46, she has been painting seriously all her adult life, and has only just begun to hit her stride. “I feel as if I have had a 20-year apprenticeship,” she says. “I mean that. I’m just at the beginning.” And to judge from the recent canvases on the walls of her light-filled west-end studio, she is on a roll.
