photo by Charles Barnes
Martha Kelly has made her lifelong home in Memphis, Tennessee. She wanders around the city with her sketchbook and her dog Henry and brings home images to make her block prints from. She has been lucky enough to be doing this full time artist thing since 1999. She had her first solo museum exhibition at Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis in 2015. She has had two more since, all career high water marks, at the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in 2022 and her show Faulkner's Trees at his home museum of Rowan Oak in Oxford, Mississippi, in 2024.
Martha started doing books as a pandemic survival project and is having a ball with them. They include M is for Memphis, P is for Possum: Love Letters from the Old Forest, and the graphic memoir Memoir of a House. She has also done illustration work for a variety of publishers including Oxford American, Westminster John Knox Press, and Contemporary Media. Martha's first major illustrated book, Book of Common Worship for the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., was published in 2018.
She maintains a home gallery of her paintings and prints in Midtown Memphis. Call or email to stop by and see her work or to meet Henry, which is truthfully why most people visit.
Read her full vita here.
Martha started doing books as a pandemic survival project and is having a ball with them. They include M is for Memphis, P is for Possum: Love Letters from the Old Forest, and the graphic memoir Memoir of a House. She has also done illustration work for a variety of publishers including Oxford American, Westminster John Knox Press, and Contemporary Media. Martha's first major illustrated book, Book of Common Worship for the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., was published in 2018.
She maintains a home gallery of her paintings and prints in Midtown Memphis. Call or email to stop by and see her work or to meet Henry, which is truthfully why most people visit.
Read her full vita here.
(901) 568-2943
In the media:
Walter Anderson Museum of Art exhibition (March to August, 2022)
Age of Nature: The Artist on WKNO tv (November 2020).
Tennessee Crossroads on PBS (March 2014).
Radio interview about the Elmwood Cemetery public art project on WKNO fm (November 2023): |
Memphis Flyer article about the Elmwood Cemetery public art project (November 2023).
Radio interview about "Memoir of a House" on WKNO fm (June 2023):
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Radio interview on WKNO fm (October 2022): |
Radio interview on WKNO fm (December 2021): |
Radio interview on WKNO fm (February 2021): |
Radio interview on WKNO fm (April 2018): |
Radio interview on WKNO fm (March 2017): |
Radio interview on WKNO fm (November 2016): |
Radio interview on WKNO fm (November 2015): |
Radio interview on WKNO fm (November 2014): |
Radio interview on WKNO fm (December 2013): |
Radio interview on WKNO fm (December 2012): |
Radio interview on WKNO fm (November 2012): |