Shirley Welten sees her images as thought space, as an experience, as a state of being. Welten about her work: “The melancholy is tangible in my work, beauty and impermanence are a part of it as well. You have to make an effort to get to the place I preserve in my images. They are a combination of what I can find and what I bring there myself. I in relation to the world, summarised in a piece of art,”

Margriet Kemper: “In the work of Shirley Welten, man is absent. Everything is awaiting what’s coming, or resting from what has been.”

“So she had to search – and searching is exciting. Searching for something you do not know what it is, but it’s certain that it’s just one thing, the only correct answer to a question, one solution to one problem, one thing that fits in with something else and nothing else, that’s more than exciting, that’s a necessity, but a preferred necessity.”
From: De vriendschap – Connie Palmen