Ben Stapleton
Audio By Carbonatix
Dallas-based artist Michael Shellis has always prioritized finding beauty and value in all things, no matter how unlikely. His work is largely made from recycled materials, such as trash and plants. He’s never thrown away a paintbrush and is currently reworking some older ones into sculptures and chandeliers.
Shellis has been chasing both beauty and sustainability for his entire career. His old graffiti moniker, which he now has tattooed on his knee, was “Found.”
“I’ve never had a real job,” Shellis tells the Observer. “I left high school at 17 and just started painting. […] I ran from the cops two or three times from graffitiing and decided, ‘You know what? I don’t want to go to jail, so I’ll just put this on canvas.”
He laughs and then adds, “But that was two or three lifetimes ago.”
Shellis’ vision and mission remain the same, but his platform has changed drastically since he was a kid running from the police. Now, he has journeyed from the Dallas arts scene to London, England to present one of his paintings to King Charles III. The painting, named “King of Sustainability,” is a portrait of the King created with Shellis’ preferred medium of found materials.
“I found a bunch of flowers in Hyde Park, and I found the wood panel that I painted it on in a dumpster,” he explains. “[I bought] a little bit of black and green paint and some paintbrushes. The rest was completely found and recycled.”
An opportunity to meet and share your work with any world leader can be overwhelming, and for an American like Shellis, the added layer of royalty makes such encounters especially surreal.
“When I was walking through Buckingham Palace to the room that we presented [the painting] in, I turned to the security guard and said, ‘I feel like Cinderella,’” Shellis says. “As Americans, we view this world almost like a Disney movie. It doesn’t seem real until you’re there.”
It was a chance connection and a shared global mission for sustainability that facilitated this fairy tale moment for Shellis. His father’s family is from London, and his cousin, Suzy Jakeman, is the head of special projects at London’s Community Kitchen (LCK), a grassroots organization dedicated to tackling food insecurity and reducing waste.
LCK has had a working relationship with the royal family for almost three years. CEO Taz Khan sounds almost as bewildered as Shellis when describing how it came to be.
“There was a video that went a bit viral of one of our food projects, and that video found its way to Buckingham Palace on some device Queen Camilla was watching,” Khan says. “She immediately said, ‘I need to go here for my visit this Christmas.’ And His Majesty was made aware of that and said, ‘You can’t go without me. This is kind of up my street of sustainability.’”
“She was really adamant about wanting to come see us,” Jakeman adds. ‘She wanted to visit us to know exactly what we were doing, especially with children.”
Understandably, the team initially doubted the inquisition’s believability.
“The Lord-Lieutenant of London contacted Suzy and we thought it was a bit of a hoax,” Khan says. “It’s not every day the King wants to come by.”
The King not only came by LCK, but has since also hosted Khan at his private residence in Scotland. It’s there, Khan says, that the two men had deeper and more meaningful conversations.
“He realized it’s not just food that we do,” Khan says.”We have an education program where we have 2500 students per year on short-term courses. We create employment pathways and enable people to break the cycle of poverty. That’s something that’s very close to his heart that he’s championed in some of his royal estates.”
The King has had a close relationship with LCK ever since. When Khan wanted to thank him for his patronage with a commissioned portrait, Jakeman knew just the artist.
“I wanted to create an homage, an art piece fit for a King,” Khan says. “We envisioned the title ‘King of Sustainability’ and Suzy was saying, ‘Well, you’ve met my cousin, Michael. He lives in Dallas, Texas’ and this and that. She showed me some of his work and I was like, ‘Oh, my god. This boy is too talented.’ […] Michael came over, we had a chat and we just clicked.”
The admiration was mutual, and for Shellis, the thrill of being involved goes deeper than showcasing his art on the world stage.
“What’s bigger than ourselves is the conversation this is going to bring to world leaders,” he says. “Things are already in motion to create a real conversation about sustainability. How can we use what we’re throwing away to create something beautiful? […] It goes a lot further than just a cool piece of art, although that’s what got us in the door.”
The meeting at Buckingham Palace bolstered Shellis’ confidence in the power of his painting. Just as Khan had before, he felt like he’d accomplished more than just a photo op with the monarch.
“He could have easily shrugged me off, asked a few pointed questions and left,” Shellis says. “He truly took an interest in the piece and got right up close to it, about a nose length away, and asked questions about my process and how I made it. It was surreal.”
“King of Sustainability” now has a home in its subject’s collection, but the work has only just begun for its creator.
“I think the next step is traveling the world to Africa, India and the Middle East and continuing this conversation,” Shellis says. “We’ll find donors in each area to commission me to create pieces of art in a similar style, but using materials that are local to that region.”
Given the interest this first painting has generated, Shellis’ goals shouldn’t be too difficult to accomplish.
“Michael’s art piece will be kind of like the entry point to conversations about wider climate action,” Khan says. “We are already talking to world leaders who wish to loan it from His Majesty, The King, but we’re wrapping it around the expert lens of creativity that Michael has to offer. Everywhere that it goes, this lovely man from Texas will be going with it.”
