Shelby Little is an artist from New Orleans living in Athens, Georgia. She paints as an exploration of her spirituality and as a way to process the world around her. The otherworldly quality of her paintings gives them a feeling of cheerfulness with an underlying darkness. “As I paint, I weave together inspiration from memories, dreams, and ancient mythology, letting my characters reveal themselves at their own pace,” says Shelby. In this way, her works have an inherent narrative that unfolds through her painting process. Shelby graduated from the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) in 2009. After studying at Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt) in Boston for a year and spending an exchange semester at Queens College in New York, Shelby returned home where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of New Orleans in 2014. She moved to Athens, Georgia in May 2022 where she now lives and works. Shelby has exhibited at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and is a member of Where Y'Art Works and Art in Res. She has been an artist-in-residence at Azule in Hot Springs, North Carolina and at Nocefresca in Sardinia, Italy.