Martha Kelly Art

I've spent most of the week working on illustrations for a short story for Memphis Parent. It's my first commission for them, and I'm pretty sure I'm not allowed to post them before they go into print. I was excited to be asked and very happy to be illustrating again. It's fun to work with a text and see which scenes really beckon to me.

So instead of posting those, I'll post this super cool video. Frank Kelly, the director of youth ministry at Idlewild, took photos of the hanging of "The Garden". He set up the camera to shoot at one minute intervals and then strung together a 30 second video from his stills. I'm so grateful to him for using his gifts to document what was, for me, quite an occasion. And I'm posting it here because it really is nifty to watch.

It's fully three years since I first started thinking about doing a large scale painting for the chapel wall at Idlewild Presbyterian, where I'm artist-in-residence. I almost always go to early service, so I spend a lot of time in the chapel.

I did one early study, and while there were things I liked about it, it wasn't right in the space and with the windows. After thinking for a while, I did the study of what would become the final painting. It's a more ROYGBIV than most of my paintings, but the front of the chapel has a fabulous, mod, 1950's or so stained glass window with lots of red and yellow, and I wanted colors that would complement it.

I did a good bit more thinking before I dove into painting. I had done exactly one painting even close to the size of one of the larger sections, so this was fully three times bigger than the biggest thing I've done. It was intimidating, but also exciting. A trip last year to the Walter Anderson museum, with its glorious murals, finally sparked me into action, so it's fitting that I was just there again before the final hanging of my piece.

The painting is called "The Garden", and is my vision of the promised renewal of creation, with the tree of life at its center and rivers flowing out of it to water the earth. I've been teaching apocalyptic literature over the last couple of months, and one of the things I love about it is that promise of a new creation. Not just human souls are saved, but all of creation is remade into what God intended for all of us. The visions of life lived in the very presence of God are the most compelling thing about that genre for me, and worth facing and making peace with the strangeness and occasional violence of those books.

The Bible texts included in the painting read: "They will be called oaks of righteousness, the plantings of the LORD." (Isaiah 61:3). "The righteous shall be like trees planted by streams of living water." (Psalm 1). "The LORD God planted a garden.... A river flowed out of Eden, and there it divided and became four rivers." (Genesis 2:8-10).

The painting was done in memory of my mother, Neta Wellford Kelly, but because of the tree of life imagery, I decided to include names from my personal tree of life along the stretchers on the back. I have found myself unexpectedly moved by lighting candles in Greek Orthodox churches on my travels, a completely alien action for a life-long Presbyterian. However, the tangible symbol of the prayer, continuing in the space even after I've left the sanctuary, is powerful. I decided to include the names of those who have been dear to me as a tangible prayer, keeping their names perpetually in the space of worship, even if I'm the only one who knows they are there.

I'm a little nervous about people seeing it for the first time on Sunday. It's big enough that folks can't ignore it, like it or not. I hope more people than not are happy to have it in their worship space. I love the Gothic idea of every craftsman in the village building the cathedral bringing their best work to be part of the house of God. I'm incredibly honored to be able to do that in my own way, and I hope the painting will be a help instead of a hindrance to people's worship.

It's leap day, and I'm celebrating with a couple of new projects. Here is the proof of my first real multi-block color print (at least the first one that wasn't a class assignment). I need to refine the edges a bit, lighten the sky, and use a more opaque dark green, but this gives you a good idea of what it will look like eventually.

This process is a leap for me, especially since I'm still printing by hand, rubbing on the back of the paper with a wooden spoon. This block will have to be printed three times for each print (one for each color, with time for drying in between), instead of just the once for my black and white ones. I visited an old family printing business here in Memphis yesterday. They have a lovely, small table top press that they no longer use, and I was hoping to sweet talk them into selling it to me, but sadly they weren't ready to let it go yet. Maybe someday. It would have been very helpful for this print in particular.

My other leap today is starting a new oil painting -- I finally finished my five canvas piece for church, so this is my first new painting in a while. I've got a show with Elizabeth Alley this fall at Askew Ferguson Nixon, and I'll have a mix of oils and watercolors. Today I'm starting the first oil for the show, one of Dixon Gardens. I'm finding myself really drawn to formal gardens lately and only wish we had more in Memphis for me to paint.

I've been working on a five panel painting for my church, Idlewild Presbyterian, for the last year or more (with several long pauses along the way). This is my final large project for them as part of my artist-in-residence position. I'll keep doing the weekly bulletin drawings, but I don't have another large project planned for this year.

Over the last week, I've finally gotten the five panels pretty much finished. Today I had a scattered sort of day, with lots of outside business to attend to, but I did take advantage of the cold weather to finish the backs of the panels.

I wanted each individual canvas to have the critical information on it, which is that this large piece, my vision of the tree of life at the center of God's Garden, is painted in memory of my mom. I had done layers of gesso on the supports of each canvas earlier, and today I got all the lettering done. Lettering is not my strong suit, but fortunately  it will be facing the wall anyway. I just want the information on there for posterity, and also to have Mom's name, even hidden, present in worship each week, as my own sort of permanent prayer for her.

These two photos show the information on the diagonal struts of each larger panel (there are two that are 36x72"). The first photo is the three smaller panels, each just 12" wide and six feet high. I've got a date with my photographer for next week, and I'll post the front when I have good photos of the finished work to show.

I was commissioned this Christmas to do a pair of paintings of Greece, and it's always fun to relive my time there. The clients chose two small pastel studies I'd done when I was there, sitting right on the sidewalk, so I had the color and light information I needed to do the oils. The left-hand one is in Athens, a walking street in Plaka, and the right-hand one is on the island of Hydra.

I didn't have time to get them photographed by my regular guy, so the colors are a little wierdly warm with the sky not quite blue enough, but you get the idea.