“Sheldon Tapley revitalizes, indeed, electrifies the still life genre by combining aspects of contemporary life with painterly constructs derived from the history of Western art.”

From
Master of the Not-So-Still Still Life
by Daniel Brown
The Artist’s Magazine
May 2012 

Sheldon Tapley became nationally known for his still-life paintings, which depicted familiar objects in lively, complex compositions. He has moved fluidly from abstraction to landscape and figurative images throughout his career.

Distinguished New York art dealer Peter Tatistcheff described the images as having "a magical believability”. Tapley's first solo show at Tatistcheff Gallery, in 1998, was reviewed in The New Yorker and recommended to readers.

The Evansville Museum honored Tapley as the Martha & Merrit deJong Memorial Artist-in-Residence in 2004 and presented a major exhibition of his art. It included thirty of the artist's still life paintings and drawings from the previous ten years; many of the works shown were loans from museum, academic, corporate and private collections across the United States.

The Center for Contemporary Art in Sacramento presented a major exhibit of Tapley’s art in 2008.

“Tapley masterfully blends the discipline of a hard-earned classical technique with a vision that is thoroughly modern and personal,” wrote Bill Creevy in a feature article for American Artist (November 1999). The artist's pastel painting, Jury Rig, was on the cover of the magazine.

Kentucky Educational Television included the artist in the 2001 series Looking at Painting, made by Guy Mendes and Robert Tharsing. In 2019, KET presented the artist in an episode of Kentucky Life, directed by Tom Thurman.

The artist is a member of Zeuxis, an association of still-life painters based in New York City that presents exhibitions at museums and galleries across the country.

Tapley's home and studio is in Danville, Kentucky. He was born in Maracaibo, Venezuela, to British parents, and raised in Europe and North America. He taught painting and drawing at Centre College for thirty-nine years before his retirement in 2022.

Publications

Master of the Not-So-Still Still Life, The Artist's Magazine, May 2012, by Daniel Brown.

Where the Past and Present Meet, American Artist, November 1999, by Bill Creevy.

Please click the titles above to view the articles