PJ Kelly – August 2010 – Artist of the Month

I paint to the best of my ability in a way that expresses my true nature best. I paint things I would like to see.
I find painting and life to be a lot alike. We can share experiences with others, but it’s our accumulated layers of experience that form us.  And in my work, many pieces share layers, but no two are alike. I like to work  in stages, to move through a series rhythmically. Layer upon layer, I incorporate new marks and create patterns. I pay attention to see when one is suddenly finished. Some are done early on in the process.  Others are more of a challenge, and the best work often comes from a start I initially had little hope for.
The abstract work I currently do is almost all about colour and movement. These small panels of colour are an opportunity to access some joy.  I like to see paint just being paint, not asked to take on representational guises. I like to see how colours react together in layers. The alternating layers can pull your eye in to interior landscapes created by the paint.
Lately I have been moving into more representational work again, painting and drawing.  I am interested in memory and relics. Things I recall from my childhood are disappearing, some for the good, some maybe not.  Probably cigarette machines soon.  Dial telephones. Phonebooths!  I feel compelled to record some of this. The layers of dots found in some of this work are like the screen of memory. I often work from old photos from my parents. The images fascinate me, but I can only imagine that existence. It’s not my memory. And even for the people who star in the picture, time skews human memory, we can never recall things the way they really were.
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