paintings & narratives

Snowbasin Utah

To be an artist is to be a maker. For me Art is a conversation with the infinite. It is the act of opening yourself to the universe and truly listening.

Four - Directions - 24" x 30" / 30" x 24"
oil and metal leaf 2019
4 sides 4 stories

Corn Mother concepts: The Corn Mother is the archetype of the giver. Our mother. Our earth. The divine feminine.

The first corn mother I painted was completed for my show Forces of Nature – Transcendent Exploration in 2014. I was seeking to express relationships with the earth and the universe by painting the forms in stones, shells and coral. I was exploring my understanding of ideas like release and return. By adding metal leaf, dry metallic and resistance pigments to my oil paints I was able to achieve color effects that changed and moved with the light and time of day. This technique lead to an evolution in my work. I refer to it as organic expressionist. This was the moment when I stopped focusing on the external world and turned to my internal world as the subject of my paintings.

The Bears - The bear is a deeply personal animal and form for me, representing both loved ones and events.

My family has been traveling the corridor between the Ohio River Valley and Florida for many generations. We have a lot of bear stories. In my paintings I return to them again and again.
As a child of five or six, on a spring afternoon, in a clearing in the smoky mountains along the Blue Ridge parkway, my family pulled over for a bit of lunch. I wandered off, and happened upon two bear cubs in a clearing. We were about the same size. We seemed to recognize each other as potential friends and having a box of cracker jacks naturally I shared them. As they came closer and closer both their mother and mine noticed. Parents can be funny. My dad seemingly from nowhere snatched me up in his arms and we ended up at the far side of the clearing. The bear cubs ended up at the other. I never got to tell them goodbye and so I think they have remained with me.

Link to Returning Artist Blog 2017

"Nothing is lost if someone remembers"
My Blog - Stories and musings from my 2017 Returning Artist Fellowship with Creative Pinellas.

"It is important what you see. Art is about the conversation you are having."

"Watching the sky for portents
I fly through holes in the universe
Made by the motherchild of creation
I land to be carried by wisdom turtles
To where the sleeping bear awakens"
- Quote from a Dallas street artist named Roddy
about the work of D YaeL Kelley

I tied my hair in the tree to have old things remember me.
Owl skull lay in the warm earth to be found and passed from hand to hand, from Clare like brushes and paint. Orchid flower seem to stop the spring as if she would go on and on never dying. Fading so slowly petal by petal, without notice, until the stem was empty. Leaving us the memory of the light, the warm earth, the owl skull.
And so I tied my hair in the tree to have old things remember me.

Paintings and poem by D YaeL Kelley