Ted Shelton, the Brown County Art Association’s
artist of the year, is captured in a rare still
moment at his home. Photo by Candace Cooksey Fulton
A sample of Shelton's work is shown at left. Photo by Candace Cooksey
An artist for all seasons
Ted Shelton honored by Brown County Art Association
By Candace Cooksey Fulton, Brownwood Bulletin
Published: Monday, April 14, 2008 8:05 AM CDT
Say the word “bluebonnets” in Texas, and most folks think April. Say the word “bluebonnets” in Brown County, and any who have been around these parts for a while will think Ted Shelton. Shelton, the 2008 Brown County Art Association’s artist of the year, has been painting Texas wildflowers the better part of 30 years. And his distinctive works have graced crocks, barn wood, blouses, purses, glassware, jackets, wooden and marble eggs, crystal bells, cards and at least one Volkswagen.
His wildflower artworks have been worn, hung or displayed in most states of the United States, and some pieces are in England and Italy. But, Shelton shakes his head and harrumphs good naturedly, “I’m not an artist, I’m just an old blacksmith that started painting flowers and never stopped.” And in truth, the flower painting is really a small part of Shelton’s long and colorful career, and only a fraction of what he has done and can do.
But for as long as he’s been doing it, folks have flocked to watch him paint, and paid to have bluebonnets and other wildflowers painted on “whatever they wanted me to paint them on,” Shelton said. “We were doing a show in Fort Worth, and a little old girl told me she wanted me to paint flowers on the shirt she was wearing. I told her, we can do it. Martha slid a cardboard and tissue under her blouse and I painted her shirt while she stood there,” Shelton said. “We dried it with a hair dryer, and she went on her way.”
His parents owned and operated Shelton’s Dairy, a showcase and nationally known jersey dairy where the herd of 200 cows were milked four times a day, by hand. That’s where Ted grew up, and where he brought his wife and bride, Martha, when they married in 1949, a year after they both graduated from Brownwood High School. “We thought we’d be in the dairy business forever,” said Martha Shelton, “but then the ’50s drought came and that ended that.”
Ted started his own business, which was some machine work, welding, blacksmithing, whatever anybody needed him to do, and would pay to have done. “That was when people were still shoeing horses, needed things fixed that now they go out and replace,” Ted said. The OSHA rulings of the late ’60s early ’70s deemed the business too diversified, and not in code with the many new regulations. “I got real mad at the bureaucracy, mad enough to have a heart attack,” Ted Shelton said. “And I had to shut down.”
But a doctor’s wife, Mrs. Lou Humphrey, had an idea for a piece of wall art, she approached Shelton about doing. It was to be an old horse and buggy, a country doctor out on rounds. And Shelton made a casting in an 8x12-foot sand bed and cast melted down beer and soda cans in a furnace he built. Pretty soon he was doing some high-dollar sandcasting art, the likes of which are in law and business offices. He welded huge modern art sculptures, again for the sophisticated art market. And Ted and Martha opened Shelton’s Little House, where their artist friends sold all kinds of artwork, and a special and inspirational friend, Edna Saunders, lived and had her studio.
The Sheltons credit Saunders for teaching her distinctive flower painting style to them. “I’d cut up some old boards, and before I could turn around, Edna would have them painted,” Ted said. “But she had started to lose her sight, and I painted a crock. Edna saw it, and said it was as good as she could do. I loved her for that.”
Shelton will be honored, and a sampling of his works in most of the media he’s ever tried will be on display, next week at the Art Center, 215 Fisk. The exhibit opens at 1 p.m. and the reception honoring Shelton begins at 1:30 Sunday.
“We’ve had a good time all these years and met so many wonderful people,” Ted Shelton said. “I don’t feel right about this honor, I can think of lots of people it ought to go to before me, but I guess I think you can get too uptight about things. “We just enjoy things as they come, we love to do it."
Personal Biography
