Rev. Dr. Shelley Best Artist | Minister | Contemplative Practitioner Artist Bio Rev. Dr. Shelley Best is an interdisciplinary artist, minister, and contemplative practitioner whose work explores healing, belonging, and resilience through color, geometry, and meditative process. Her paintings are created through prayer, mindfulness, and intentional use of color psychology, designed to support nervous system regulation and embodied restoration, particularly within healing and community-centered spaces. Her work has been exhibited at Yale Divinity School, Hartford Seminary, Hartford International University for Religion and Peace, Four Points Gallery, and the Gallery at Capital Community College, and is held and experienced within faith communities, medical practices, yoga studios, and other healing environments. Across these settings, her work functions as sanctuary rather than decoration, inviting viewers into stillness, grounding, and renewal. Rev. Dr. Best holds a Master’s degree from Hartford Seminary, a Master of Divinity from Yale Divinity School, and a doctorate from Hartford International University for Religion and Peace. She is a trained mindfulness meditation teacher through programs led by Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield, and a 200-hour certified yoga teacher with specialization in yoga nidra, gentle yoga, and moving meditation. She is the founder of Creative Disruptor® and TubmanWalker, platforms dedicated to creativity as a catalyst for personal and community transformation. Curatorial Statement The work of Rev. Dr. Shelley Best exists at the intersection of art, contemplation, and care. Created through prayer, mindfulness, and intentional color practice, her paintings are not conceived as objects for passive viewing, but as environments that invite the body into regulation, grounding, and rest. Drawing from Indigenous and African American meditative traditions, as well as contemporary mindfulness and somatic awareness, Best employs geometric repetition and layered color fields to engage the parasympathetic nervous system. In anxious or overstimulating settings, this repetition offers rhythm and predictability, supporting the body’s natural capacity for calm, restoration, and resilience. Copper, gold, and earth-based tones recur throughout the work, evoking soil, lineage, sacred worth, and the alchemy of healing through presence. These works are intentionally placed in medical practices, faith communities, educational institutions, and contemplative spaces where individuals arrive carrying stress, grief, or transition. Within these contexts, the paintings function as visual sanctuaries. They create pauses. They slow breath. They offer permission to exhale. Rather than illustrating narratives, the work invites embodied encounter. Viewers are encouraged to linger, breathe, and notice their own internal response. In this way, the practice reframes art as accompaniment, holding space for restoration, belonging, and the quiet activation of LovePower.

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TheWay to Wellness (2025)  Acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches $2880 This painting explores how repetition and gentle rhythm create safety in the body, inviting the nervous system into rest, recognition, and repair. Through layered forms and steady visual patterns, the work reflects the body’s own intelligence. When the eye encounters consistency and flow, the breath softens, tension eases, and the inner world begins to settle. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, this piece honors wellness as something cultivated rather than forced. The repeated shapes serve as visual anchors, offering reassurance to an overstimulated system and guiding the viewer toward calm awareness. Rhythm becomes a language of care, reminding the body that it is safe to pause, to feel, and to restore. The Way to Wellness is an invitation to return to oneself with gentleness. It affirms that healing often begins not through urgency or effort, but through presence, predictability, and the quiet permission to exhale.

We’ve Got You (2025)  Acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 $2880 This 48×48 pillar piece of the Healing Roots collection centers the power of community in the healing process. The work reflects how we gather around one another with care, creating circles of protection, shelter, and belonging. Healing is not meant to happen alone. It unfolds when people are seen, held, and valued. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, We’ve Got You affirms that every person matters beyond measure. You are not a number or an afterthought. You are known, supported, and protected. This piece offers a visual promise of collective care, reminding the viewer that healing becomes possible when we stand together and say, with intention and love, we’ve got you.

Resilience (2025) Acrylic and copper on canvas 48 × 48 inches $2880 This piece explores the energy that moves through our bodies and our lives, reminding us that resilience is not about never breaking, but about restoring flow. As the eye follows the movement within the work, we remember that energy does not disappear in hard times. It shifts, gathers, and finds new pathways forward. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, this piece reflects how life force carries us through disruption and helps us bounce back with strength and grace. Even in moments of fatigue or loss, vitality remains present. Resilience lives in movement, in circulation, and in the quiet truth that life continues to rise within us.

Measures of Grace (2025) Acrylic on canvas 40 x 40 $2,000 Measures of Grace reflects the tension between visible order and lived uncertainty. Soft tones of taupe, silver, white, and buff create a grounded field, while a ladder and track move through the composition, suggesting an underlying structure at work. Bursts of orange, green, and red introduce vitality, reminding us that life continues to pulse even when the path feels unclear. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, this piece affirms that support often exists beneath the surface. Even when order is not apparent, we are held by something greater than ourselves. Measures of Grace honors the sustaining power of grace, the quiet force that carries us through every season, offering steadiness, possibility, and the assurance that we are never moving alone.

Framing Health (2025) Acrylic on canvas 33 x 33 inches $1361 This painting traces a journey of vitality through red, white, green, and silver, honoring the layered pathways of health within the body. Each color reflects a dimension of life force: movement, clarity, renewal, and balance. Together, they form a visual rhythm that invites the nervous system into steadiness and respect for the body’s natural intelligence. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, Framing Health recognizes wellness as an unfolding process rather than a fixed state. The movement of color becomes a meditation on care, resilience, and restoration, reminding the viewer that health is something we frame with attention, presence, and reverence.

Healing Roots: Self-Acceptance (2025) Acrylic on canvas 24 x 48 $1440 This first Healing Roots work grounds the viewer in orange, red, green, and copper, drawing together warmth, vitality, growth, and earthbound strength. The colors meet and settle into a visual language of embodiment and presence, inviting reflection on the relationship we hold with ourselves. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, this piece is a meditation on self-acceptance and self-appreciation. It affirms that health begins not with correction or striving, but with recognizing one’s inherent worth. As the elements come into harmony, the work reminds us that when we accept and honor ourselves, that inner alignment becomes visible, shaping how we live, heal, and move through the world.

Hedge of Protection (2025) Acrylic and copper on canvas 18 x 18 inches $405 This painting embodies the assurance of being held by a life-giving force that surrounds, protects, and sustains. Layers of green, copper, silver, and gold form a living boundary, symbolizing growth, strength, wisdom, and sacred care. The colors move together in quiet rhythm, offering a felt sense of safety and belonging. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, Hedge of Protection speaks to the deep knowing that life itself is concerned for you. It reflects a protective presence that does not confine, but nurtures and restores. This work invites the viewer to rest in trust, reminding us that protection is an expression of love and ongoing life.

HeavenWard(2025)  Acrylic on canvas 36 x 48 $2160 HeavenSent reflects the quiet journey of souls moving heavenward, illuminated like vapor, present yet transient. The forms suggest motion without weight, as if the figures are passing through rather than settling in place. There is a softness to the ascent, honoring the mystery of life as a sacred passage. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, this piece reminds us that we are all in motion, circling toward higher ground, deeper meaning, and eternity. HeavenSent invites contemplation of what lies beyond the visible, affirming that life is a pilgrimage of the soul, guided by longing for heaven, for transcendence, and for the sacred horizon that calls us onward.

Belonging in Motion (2025) Acrylic and copper on canvas 12 × 48 inches $720 This painting explores the peace that arises through regulation and the healing intelligence of the body. Inspired by the movement of blood and the quiet cooperation of cells, the work reflects the truth that all parts belong together. Flowing forms and rhythmic patterns echo circulation, inviting the nervous system into balance and ease. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, Belonging in Motion honors regulation as harmony in movement rather than stillness. Healing emerges as the body remembers its natural rhythms and inherent wholeness. This piece offers a visual meditation on unity, reminding us that belonging is not something we earn, but something already alive within us.

JoyLife [1] (2025) Acrylic on canvas 12 x 12 inches $180 This painting celebrates the way spirituality fuels optimism and restores the capacity for joy. Through light, movement, and expressive color, the work reflects the choice to remain open to hope even in uncertain times. Joy here is not denial, but a life force that rises from trust, meaning, and inner connection. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, JoyLife invites the viewer to remember that joy is renewable. It emerges when spirit is allowed to breathe through daily life, awakening resilience, possibility, and delight. This piece honors joy as a sacred energy, guiding us toward hope, aliveness, and a deeper yes to life.

JoyLife [2] (2025)  Acrylic on canvas 12 x 12 inches $180 This painting celebrates the way spirituality fuels optimism and restores the capacity for joy. Through light, movement, and expressive color, the the work reflects the choice to remain open to hope even in uncertain times. Joy here is not denial, but a life force that rises from trust, meaning, and inner connection. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, JoyLife invites the viewer to remember that joy is renewable. It emerges when spirit is allowed to breathe through daily life, awakening resilience, possibility, and delight. This piece honors joy as a sacred energy, guiding us toward hope, aliveness, and a deeper yes to life.

LifeForce (2025) Acrylic on canvas 18 x 18 inches $810 Life Force (Two-Piece Set) Life Force explores the sacred vitality of living systems through the pairing of silver and green. Silver reflects the preciousness, endurance, and sanctity of life, while green embodies growth, renewal, and active aliveness. Together, they frame life as both sacred and dynamic. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, this two-piece set invites the viewer to see life as something worthy of reverence and protection. Like precious metal, life carries inherent value. Like green growth, it continually regenerates. Life Force honors the truth that what is alive is both resilient and sacred, calling us to recognize, tend, and cherish the life moving within and around us.

The Garden of Life (2025) Acrylic on canvas 40 x 40 Acrylic on canvas $2000 This meditation evokes the richness of the earth through green, red, orange, and white, calling to mind root vegetables, fertile soil, and the quiet power of what grows beneath the surface. The colors speak of nourishment, warmth, and renewal, honoring the deep connection between land and life. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, The Garden of Life reflects the wisdom that healing begins in what is grounded and cultivated over time. There is vitality in the dirt itself. As elders once said, we all need a little earth in us. This work celebrates the sacred abundance that rises from deep roots and living soil.

Deconstructed Prayer (2025) Acrylic on canvas 16 x 16 $320 Deconstructed Prayer is an earthy meditation on faith stripped of polish and pretense. Rendered in taupe, gold, white, and moss, the piece is grounded, open, and intentionally uncontained. There is no neat framing or finished answer. Instead, faith appears in fragments, gestures, and quiet spaces where meaning breathes. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, this work honors prayer not as performance, but as truth-telling. It breaks prayer down to its essence. Presence. Longing. Trust. Deconstructed Prayer invites the viewer to release perfection and encounter faith in its most honest form, where the sacred lives not in the package, but in what remains when everything unnecessary falls away.

EarthStar (2025) Acrylic on canvas 16 x 16 $320 EarthStar brings together copper and silver, in four converging squares that honor the preciousness of balance. The metallic tones speak to richness, grounding, and sacred value. Copper anchors the work in the earth, while silver lifts it toward clarity and cosmic awareness. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, this piece reminds us that we carry the same dual nature. We are formed from the soil and shaped by the stars. EarthStar is a visual meditation on harmony between grounded presence and spiritual expansiveness, inviting the viewer to recognize themselves as both earthly and sacred, held in balance, alive with meaning and worth.

Living Faith (2025) Acrylic on canvas 18 x 18 inches $405 This painting portrays faith as a living, vital force. The green cross symbolizes growth, renewal, and health, while gold and silver reflect faith’s enduring strength and sacred illumination. Together, they express a faith that is active, embodied, and transformative rather than static or distant. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, Living Faith honors faith as something that moves through the body and shapes how we heal, love, and live. It invites the viewer to experience faith as nourishment and resilience, alive with possibility and grounded in wholeness.

Creative Vitality Rev. Dr. Shelley Best, 2025 Acrylic on canvas 18 x 18 $405 Healing Roots Collection This meditation reminds us that life is not fixed but continually created. Vitality emerges through choice, intention, and the daily acts of care we offer ourselves. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, this 18 by 18 painting reflects faith as a living force that guides creation rather than a distant belief. Color and movement invite reflection on how health, wellness, and richness are shaped over time. The work honors the truth that a flourishing life is cultivated through presence and trust, encouraging the viewer to participate consciously in shaping a life of depth, vitality, and renewal.

Life Beyond Limitations (2025) Acrylic on canvas 18 x 18 inches $405 This painting expresses a vision of life that moves beyond constraint into spiritual freedom and renewal. Green signals growth and vitality, silver reflects wisdom and illumination, taupe offers grounding and balance, and white opens space for clarity and transcendence. Together, these tones create a living harmony that invites the body and spirit into ease. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, Life Beyond Limitations honors the truth that healing is both embodied and transcendent. The work invites the viewer to release imposed boundaries and remember their innate aliveness. It is a quiet meditation on possibility, wholeness, and the sacred movement toward becoming more fully alive.

Serendipity Rev. Dr. Shelley Best, 2025 Acrylic on canvas 8 x 8 $80 Healing Roots Collection This painting celebrates the dance of life in motion. The painting holds bliss, optimism, and levity, inviting the viewer into the simple miracle of being alive. Color and rhythm echo the joy of breath, the pleasure of movement, and the quiet wonder of the senses. It honors the everyday gifts of sight, sound, taste, and touch as sacred experiences. This work is a reminder that life is not only endured but enjoyed, discovered in unexpected moments of lightness and grace. Serendipity affirms vitality as joy, and joy as a form of presence.

Whimsy (2025) Acrylic on canvas 18 x 18 $405 Whimsy explores the playful intelligence of circulation and the life-giving energy that moves through the body. In shades of red, silver, and taupe, the painting captures the fluid, almost mischievous motion of blood and energy as it travels, shifts, and responds. There is no straight line. Healing arrives through movement, variation, and flow. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, this piece honors circulation as both essential and expressive. Its gentle unpredictability becomes a source of vitality rather than disorder. Whimsy invites the viewer to appreciate how healing often emerges through motion, reminding us that life restores itself through the lively, creative dance of circulation within us.

Royal Mosaic (2025) Acrylic and copper on canvas 18 x 18 inches $405 This painting is composed of tiny squares in bronze, gold, silver, and copper, forming a luminous mosaic that draws the viewer toward the sacred center of faith. Each metallic symbol honors the precious gift of every living cell, reflecting the truth that holiness is carried within the body itself. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, Royal Mosaic affirms that we are sacred not through perfection, but through presence and life. The many pieces belong together, creating wholeness through unity. This work welcomes the viewer into reverence, reminding us that faith lives in the intricate beauty of being fully, divinely alive. Scan to hear the artist speak about this work and the Creative Disruption practice behind it.

PreciousLife (2025)  Acrylic on canvas  Size: 8 × 8 in $80 Description: Precious Life centers the sacred value of living breath and being. Silver and copper metallics form a radiant field, evoking dignity, reverence, and the regal worth carried by every life. At the center, a cross anchors the work in faith, while green signals vitality, renewal, and growth. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, this piece affirms that life itself is sacred and deserving of care. Precious Life invites reflection on responsibility, compassion, and the quiet truth that every life holds immeasurable value and deserves to be protected and honored.

Protecting Your Peace  Acrylic on Canvas  Size: 8 × 8 in $80 Description: Protecting Your Peace reflects the sacred practice of preserving inner calm in a demanding world. Rendered in copper and silver, the piece balances grounding and clarity, symbolizing the body as a sanctuary worthy of care and protection. The metallic tones evoke strength and resilience, while their harmony suggests regulation and rest. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, this work affirms that peace is not passive. It is actively guarded through boundaries, presence, and intentional care. Protecting Your Peace invites the viewer to honor their nervous system, reduce stress, and remember that safeguarding peace is an essential act of self-respect and healing.

Grounded Wellness Acrylic on Canvas $45 This 6 × 6 piece celebrates the essential relationship between the body and the natural world. Green reflects life force, growth, and transformation, shaped by light and nourished through living soil. Copper evokes the richness of the earth, grounding the work in warmth, stability, and material wisdom. Together, these elements speak to wellness as something cultivated, not manufactured. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, Grounded Wellness reminds us that, like plants, we need sun, soil, air, and time to thrive. It invites the viewer to step outside, touch the earth, breathe in the green world, and remember that healing begins when we reconnect with the living systems that sustain us.

Creative Living Rev. Dr. Shelley Best, 2025 Acrylic on canvas 8 x 8 $80 Healing Roots Collection Creative Living is an 8 by 8 meditation on possibility and becoming. This painting reflects a life that does not end with what is, but continually unfolds through imagination, choice, and creative growth. Color and movement suggest vitality in motion, inviting the viewer to see life as something actively shaped rather than passively received. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, the work honors creativity as a living force that fuels richness, renewal, and expansion. It affirms that a creative life remains open to change, alive with potential, and sustained by the courage to imagine more.

The Essence of Life (Diptych) (2025) Medium Acrylic on canvas, two panels Collection Healing Roots $320 Description This two-piece diptych holds the quiet essence of faith as lived experience. Rendered in muted tones and gentle movement, the work invites stillness rather than declaration. Faith appears here not as certainty, but as presence. A steady knowing. A soft strength that carries us through uncertainty and into healing. The Essence of Life reflects the interconnected nature of spirit, light, and restoration. Healing unfolds in layers, just as faith does. Slowly. Tenderly. The paired panels speak to relationship and balance, reminding us that life is sustained through connection between the seen and unseen, the inner and outer, the fragile and the enduring. This work offers a visual prayer for peace, affirming that life itself is sacred, luminous, and held.

Finding Your Way to Clarity 36 x 36 $1620 [NFS] This piece explores clarity as a journey rather than a destination. Rendered in shades of purple, gold, gray, and white, the work invites the eye inward, toward a centered space of understanding and calm. Purple reflects wisdom and contemplation, gold signals illumination, gray offers balance, and white opens room for insight. Rooted in the Healing Roots tradition, Finding Your Way to Clarity honors the process of moving through complexity without rush. It reminds the viewer that clarity emerges through patience, reflection, and presence. This piece serves as a visual meditation, guiding the body and mind toward alignment, focus, and the quiet confidence that comes from seeing more clearly.

Welcome to the Healing Roots Collection

Belong Deeply. Rise Boldly. Thrive Fully. Disrupt to Create.

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Belong Deeply. Rise Boldly. Thrive Fully. Disrupt to Create. 〰️