Sheila Asbell Allen creates artwork that expresses a sense of joy and hope, particularly using figures interacting with colorful shapes. 

The figures are often balancing, flying, dancing, diving or playing a game.  Their actions often seem precarious, yet liberating.  Allen anticipates viewers will create their own imaginative narratives from the figures, shapes, and colors. 

Allen lives and creates in Bloomington, Illinois, a community with a thriving arts scene.  For several years she and her husband Les Allen, an artist, owned Paintin' Place, an artist supply shop, in downtown Normal, Illinois.  Her enthusiasm and interest in her customers' work has inspired many professional and amateur artists. Allen works mainly in acrylics, colored pencils, and black ink.

Please click on one of the links below to see more of Sheila Asbell Allen's artwork.

Artist's Statement

Overview of artist's work in slide show format

Paintings

Colored pencil with acrylic varnish art work

Black ink drawings

Ornaments

Exhibitions

Art and community activities

Contact information 

     “Sheila Asbell Allen uses distinctive painting techniques mixed with surprising choices of color and composition to create uniquely personal images that are both mysterious and beautiful.  Her vocabulary of iconic shapes and figures, utilized in endless combinations with varied light and value, present the viewer with open-ended narratives about emotion and experience.  By careful and specific placement of the figures and shapes, Allen endeavors to produce visual tension in her paintings that, she says, serve as ‘a metaphor of the trials and storms in all of our lives,’ while also creating ‘a balance of hopefulness’ that is the undercurrent of human experience.”

Alison Hatcher
Curator, McLean County Arts Center
 Bloomington, IL