Kelly Irvine, abstract painter

About the Artist

Kelly Irvine is an abstract, color field painter living and working in Baltimore, MD. She received her bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland where she studied graphic design and fine art. Kelly also studied painting at Yellow Barn Studios and Montpelier Arts Center in Maryland, as well as at the Washington Studio School in D.C. After working for over 25 years as a graphic designer and art director while painting in her spare time, she transitioned in 2019 to full-time abstract painting and freelance textile print design. Kelly is now focused solely on her full-time painting practice. In January 2024, Kelly mounted a solo exhibition at the NIH Clinical Center's West Gallery; prior to that in 2023, Kelly showed her paintings in a solo show at Touchstone Gallery in Washington DC. Her work has also been shown at the Martha Spak Gallery in Washington, D.C., Delaplaine Arts Center in Frederick MD; Maryland Art Place and Creative Alliance in Baltimore; Columbia Art Center in Maryland; and Yellow Barn Gallery/Glen Echo Park in Montgomery County, MD. In 2020, her painting "Cabochon" received honorable mention from juror Harry Cooper, senior curator and head of modern art at the National Gallery of Art, in the Friends of Yellow Barn annual members show. Kelly is a 2023 recipient of Maryland State Arts Council's Grants for Artists.    

Artist's Statement

Artist statement: My abstract color field paintings invite the viewer to step into a lush, translucent world. I use sheer, overlapping hues, gestural brush work, flowing movement, and repeating motifs. I work to create unexpected moments of delicious interaction between color planes. I have been drawn to the beauty of layered transparent hues from an early age and am constantly experimenting with new processes and materials to achieve and manipulate them. I’m especially inspired by the canvas staining techniques and paintings of Helen Frankenthaler and Washington Color School artists Morris Louis and Kenneth Victor Young. My work typically features organic forms and marks that flow and intersect, resulting in increased tonal depth. Hard edges contrast with areas of variation in color intensity. Most recently, I have been working with intensely colored (often fluorescent) thinned acrylics, which I paint directly onto raw canvas. Because the surface hasn’t been primed, the paint soaks into the fibers and “stains” the canvas, imbuing it with depth, energy and vibrancy from within. I’m particularly drawn to unexpected juxtaposition of joyful, bright  fields of color against natural, untreated canvas.