About Sheri Brassell
“You do not find turtles, turtles find you.” -Hawaiian proverb
Sheri’s artistic lineage is influenced by her work in psychotherapy and one of her favorite early 20th century German Expressionists, Kandinsky. Expressing her emotions into canvas is most meaningful when Sheri connects her innermost places that touch her heart, extends to her hand, to guide the paint brush into the canvas. And for many years, she couldn’t find her way to color and paint. Sheri put her paint brush down when she began her twenty-five-year career in the tech industry. Sheri picked up her brush again after facing life threatening health issues.
Sheri started painting a series of turtles and blue herons from a place of turmoil, fear, and letting go. The turtles were inspired from her daughter’s first scuba dive off the shores of Maui. On the drive to the dive spot her daughter stated emphatically "I don’t want to go!" Sheri remembers how frightened and angry her daughter felt. Sheri also understood her daughter’s absolute love for being in the water, swimming, and exploration of the depths. Her daughter emerged from her dive giddy with excitement. While swimming, she was graced with a nearly five-foot turtle swimming along her side. Having been visited by this gentle giant, her daughter said, “Mom, you knew me better than I knew myself.” Sheri “saw” her daughter before her daughter could consciously “see” herself. In that moment, Sheri, though not swimming with the gentle giant, “saw” the need for her to work with her own fears, protests in the way her daughter had. Sometimes we need someone, or like a turtle in this moment, to see us before we can see ourselves.
The blue herons, like the turtles, became a beacon during Sheri’s health recovery. She sees them most everyday she walks Greenlake.
Sheri started taking an Oil Painting class the beginning of 2019. She fell in love with the texture and movement of oils kissing the canvas. Her health is back on the mend and she decided to retire from her tech career and spend more time with her brushes and canvas.
She creates from an emotional place because she is still living and still learning to be and not merely do life.