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.