Artist Statement
I love color. It moves me, motivates me, stirs my insides, makes me happy. There is not a single white wall in my house. I am enraptured by nature and its creatures. All of them. The cold and scaly to the warm and fuzzy. I see character and individuality in all of them. They scream at me to be painted.
My first acrylic painting was on a large canvas 36" x 48". A friend sent me a photo of his resident wild iguana that visited his swimming pool daily. This animal was majestic. He was regal. He was full of color. Oh, yes, he had attitude! A feeling came over me, an urgency to paint him. That was the beginning of color on canvas.
I connected to the demand, the drive, the call to paint that iguana and to paint him larger than life. It was a command to make an effort to project his magnificence onto canvas with only the use of my eyes, paint and brush. It stuck. It's the spark that ignites my creative process. It's the tool I continue to use when deciding my subject matter.
Paper/cloth mache sculpture: revisiting childhood on adult terms. I take my passion and curiosity for nature and structure it into a three dimensional art piece. It hurts my head...in a good way.
It isn't just about what it's supposed to look like or about achieving the vision. It's about problem solving. It's about armature, structure, durability. Will it stand up on it's own? Will it hang at the proper angle? Work that brain, Kelly, work it.
I never know exactly where to begin, so I begin at the beginning and then something magical happens. The critter gets a voice! It's silent but its character begins to emerge. It has personality. It gets a name!