Shelley Ryde - Painter, printmaker, art educator

Shelley Ryde is a well known, highly respected Aotearoa art educator and artist living in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland NZ.

Shelley has led the visual art department and taught art at Diocesan School for Girls in Auckland NZ, finishing this position in 2024 after 42 years of devotion, hard work, commitment and a lot of love.

Many young art students and NZ practising artists have been taught and inspired by Shelley, including a number of guests on this podcast who speak so highly of her and her influence.

This is the first part of a 2 part series. In this episode we talk about Shelley's life as an artist and the connections with her important teaching career. She shares her childhood memories, her creative journey and her 50+ years as an artist. Part 2 will be released in the near future and is all about her experiences, reflections and philosophies as an art educator in Aotearoa.

Shelley is a beautiful storyteller. We talk about her childhood on the west coast of the south Island and her family and how those things have influenced her as an artist and a writer. She shares her experience studying at Ilam School of Art in Christchurch in the late sixties, her relationship with her lecturer Rudi Gopas, and her peers at Ilam including Phil Clairmont, Philippa Blair, Chris Booth and Sally Burton. We discuss what Shelley gained from this course and how her work evolved and her early teaching days teaching visual art with Fred Graham. Shelley shares a pivotal opportunity when she won a scholarship to a workshop in New York in 1990 which started her love of printmaking and how that influenced her own practice and her art teaching.

It is fascinating to hear about her era studying art in the sixties, her experiences, her reflections and the evolution of her work. I know you'll really enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed speaking to Shelley. Be sure to tune in to the second chapter of this 2 part series, coming sometime soon.

This is the link to the presentation that we mention in this episode which includes chronological images of Shelley's artwork throughout her career with poems she has written.

Shelley Ryde on retirement:

" Recently I have been considering this quote I used in my leaving speech: Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.’  In this case I left my career as an art teacher behind to begin my new life as a retiree. The whole concept of retirement feels limiting to me.  I really do dislike that word!  It feels like we are seen as ‘finished’ or ‘done’ and too often retired is tied to outdated notions of aging. 

If we embrace the concept of a second act (or third) retirement can be reframed as something vibrant and positive , not something to escape from or to. 

It feels like a paradox: on the one hand, society expects me to rest on my laurels and on the other I have this desire to keep contributing on my terms.

Of course, most people like to think they are contributing to something; to their community or to humanity or whatever, but the predominant sentiment I seem to get from most people now is: ‘you deserve a rest’ or ‘you have earned the right to do nothing’

I disagree on so many levels.

In two days I will be seventy six.  I spent my previous lifetime acquiring all this knowledge and suddenly it is taken out of circulation and  placed on long-term deposit in a bank vault. 

I know I have a legacy. The students I have taught all those years are out there doing amazing things and I am so proud of them.

 And what I have been thinking is this: is it greedy to want to continue to have a useful life? Over the fifty plus years I have been a teacher, a lot of money and professional development has been invested in me.

Just because I am ‘retired’ doesn’t mean that there should be a cap on that investment. The investment made in me over the last fifty years hasn’t expired, and I know others can still benefit from that knowledge. I want to continue to give, not because I feel obligated, but because it’s part of who I am. The community should continue to draw down on the principal. I want to reinvest it or pay it back!"