If a painting was a mirror, what would a viewer
do in the face of a Ryan Kelly image? The answer
is as varied as the approaches, techniques and political
realities embodied in a Ryan Kelly painting. The
risk of painting politically charged imagery for
any artist today can be great as well as confounding.
Kelly approaches many of our global society’s
“darker” realities with courage and
a talent for making them palpable. States Kelly,
“Though I am a story teller, I refrain from
being too literal or straightforward in my interpretation
of a storyline. My paintings explore mostly general
principles, such as love, greed, loneliness, fate,
helplessness, hope and violence.”
Kelly’s technique is both rigid and inviting,
using classical rendering, illustrative lines and
adventurous color palates to shape and sculpt narrative
scenes that literally seem to jump off the canvas.
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