FULTON, Miss. (AP) - As a small child growing up in Belmont, Shelley Ozbirn was encouraged to be creative.
“We didn’t have much, so I was always making things,” Ozbirn said. “I loved coloring and painting. In school, we didn’t have art class, but sometimes we’d make things for Mother’s Day or for holidays.”
Ozbirn, who is the advertising sales manager at the Itawamba County Times in Fulton, said she always received positive reinforcement for her efforts, whether she was doing a paint-by-numbers kit or making plastic stained-glass windows.
“My mom used to sketch and do portraits when she was younger, so some of my creativity likely came from her,” Ozbirn said.
After she and her husband, David, married 31 years ago, Ozbirn once again got interested in painting.
“I did a couple of acrylic paintings of sunflower fields that turned out well,” she said.
Then a friend of hers talked her into taking watercolor lessons from artist Jennell Trulove, who had a studio on Highway 23.
“I did not like it,” said Ozbirn, 50. “Watercolor is hard to control and I wasn’t used to it. Everything ran together. But I kept at it for about six months. I wasn’t going to quit.”
Ozbirn’s lessons stopped when she got pregnant with her son, Tony. But after a few years, she picked up her watercolor brush again.
“I was doing flowers, maybe an old shed here and there, some landscapes,” she said. “The largest thing I did was an 8x10 – nothing was very big. I was just doing it in my spare time, giving it away to family and friends.”
Ozbirn tried art lessons again, this time from Billy Kirk.
“Most of my watercolors at that point were pastels – very light,” she said. “The first thing he said to me was, ‘You need to put more paint on that paper – more color.’ I got more bold after that.”
Ozbirn found her niche when she began painting watercolor trees in 2008. She opened an Etsy shop, Shelley Roze (a play on her name Shelley Rose Ozbirn), and started selling small paintings – mostly 4x6 or 5x7 inches.
“I started doing the small trees so people could afford original artwork,” she said.
She sold her creations at the Gumtree Festival in Tupelo in 2015 and 2016, and in 2017, she got a booth at Porch Swing Pickings when it opened in Fulton. The shop offers antiques, gifts, new items, repurposed furniture and homemade goodies.
In her space, Ozbirn sells original watercolor and acrylic paintings, prints, and individual and boxed notecards of her original artwork.
“I do take commissions, but most of what I paint is for pleasure – trees, old houses, old trucks, old barns – anything that’s nostalgic,” she said. “But my trees are the most popular.”
Ozbirn said she had a colorful childhood and many of her paintings are inspired by those memories.
“Fall is my favorite season and I think that goes back to when I was about 3,” she said. “We went to visit a cousin – I don’t even remember where – but there was an old barn decorated with colorful streamers. I love that memory.”
A lot of her tree paintings are fall-inspired. At the base of a tree with its red, orange, gold and green leaves, you might find bright orange pumpkins, or a scarecrow in the background or a cobweb.
Other tree paintings might incorporate a birthday party, a circus tent, a lemonade stand or a ferris wheel.
“I don’t have a lot of my own original artwork in my house,” said Ozbirn, who lives in Belmont. “But I do buy a lot of artwork from other artists. There’s only one thing I’ve ever done that I will not part with – a portrait of my son in his Halloween costume. Generally, I don’t like to do people.”
Ozbirn finds weekends are the best time to create items for her booth at Porch Swing and her Etsy shop.
“I don’t do a lot in the evenings because I’m tired when I get home from work and I don’t feel like I’m giving it my best,” she said. “Even if you just allow two hours on the weekend, if you just focus, you can get a lot done. But I couldn’t do any of this without the support of my family and my mom. They are my biggest fans.”
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