“It’s not objective — this is what I do,” said Selma Art Guild Artist of the Month Shirley Quarles Baird as she looks at a painting of swirls and patterns of color hanging on a wall. “My work is ‘abstract expressionism.’”

From clay sculpture to pottery or oil painting, the Selma native has been involved in art all of her life. Abstract art, Baird said, is what she enjoys the most.

“It’s very satisfying to me — very fulfilling,” Baird said, who moved back to Selma from Montgomery in 2005. “Abstract watercolors, that’s what I’ve concentrated on for the past 20 to 25 years; with watercolor it’s portable and it doesn’t take up much space; I haven’t done anything else since.”

Having received art instruction from Mary Baldwin College in Virginia, the University of Alabama and Auburn University-Montgomery, some of Baird’s paintings can best be described as unorthodox.

“I am an experimental artist,” Baird said. “I search for new and unique ways to express relationships between shapes and colors. My shapes and colors are inspired by what I daily encounter as well as those that reside in my subconscious. My paintings also express my love of music and dance and have a strong sense of spirituality.

“My style (abstract expressionism) developed in America around the 1940s and 1950s —it was made more popular in New York, rather than in Paris or Italy at that time,” Baird said.

Baird’s affiliations include International Society of Experimental Artists, Watercolor Society of Alabama, Georgia Watercolor Society, Southern Watercolor Society, Louisiana Watercolor Society and the Selma Art Guild; her paintings include “High Aspirations, Spaced Out, Mandarin, Making Midnite Music in the Moonlite, South Border, Off The Wall, Aurora, The Story Unfolds, Booyah, Tempest Tossed, Smack Dab in the Middle, Shining Moment, Interior Motive, Sky Castles and Just Brilliant.

Baird’s work can be seen until the end of the month on Fridays and Saturdays from noon to 4 p.m.