Martha Kelly Art

My partner was digging around on YouTube and found this video of me talking about My Own Places, the landscape exhibition I had at Dixon Gallery and Gardens in 2015. They invited me as a current landscape artist to do a solo show as a complement to their Southern Impressionism exhibit. It was the highlight of my career so far, and it was fun to revisit talking about the way I paint and carve prints and how those two media differ from each other. And how keeping a sketchbook has radically broadened the work that I do.

We had one nice weather day left yesterday. Really half a one. I took my show down this week, and I’ve been doing a ton of paperwork and the business side of working for myself, so I decided to go rogue with my bicycle yesterday. I have a milk crate on the back of it that will carry a nice amount of art gear, so I packed my sketching things, a lunch, and my current book and cycled out the Greenline to Shelby Farms park. I sat on a bench in the sun by my favorite small lake, which I had to myself except for a flock of ducks on it and a herd of buffalo behind me. I saw two great herons, ate my lunch and read, did this sketch, ran through the visitors’ center with a great gift shop (as well as other necessities) and cycled home. It was sprinkling most of the ride, but not badly enough to be unpleasant. The round trip was 25 miles, and it’s the first time I’ve done it on my own, which felt great. I really enjoy that protected bike path, almost completely out of traffic. It was a perfect day before I get on the run again. I’m grateful to be able to take a flexible day with the weather and just go when it’s nice and work other times to make up for it.

I pretty much spent the day on Broad Avenue on Saturday. It’s one of Memphis’s newer art districts, and they were having an art walk/festival. The Memphis Urban Sketchers met up at 10 at City and State, the coffee shop at the far end, and beautifully, my visiting sister went with me. One of her college friends is one of my sketching friends, and we had a ball. It was coldish to start, so we hung out at City and State a good bit. Above is a sketch I had done there a couple of weeks ago but not posted. Below are the people studies I did while we were all hanging out talking.

I was working in gray fountain pen and watercolor. I enthusiastically put down a bunch of wet paint in my regular art journal (5x5”), so I switched over to the 8” square one after and did a larger more connected spread. Elizabeth was wearing stripes, which are always such fun to draw. Vicki and Nancy were sitting with her, and I caught Nancy with a brush in her mouth as she worked.

All of this was accompanied by chai. Very civilized sketching. Afterwards a group of us walked all up and down the street, checking out the shops and art shows. The last three bought fantastic bowls of paella and sat out in the sunshine eating and visiting. It was an excellent day.

I visited family over the weekend and also did something of a Midwest art museum tour. Back in college I had taken one summer sculpture class in Omaha and visited the Joslyn, but my memory of it was hazy at best. It was a total delight. A gorgeous variegated pink stone building housing a beautifully curated collection. We had just that morning seen a piece on Helen Frankenthaler on one of the Sunday morning shows. My art knowledge of mid 20th century and beyond, especially in abstract work, is pretty sketchy. I had seen her being mentioned various places and seen a piece or two, but beyond that knew nothing. This monumental piece gobsmacked me in person. It’s the only one I managed to do a sketch of, but I was so glad to have that time to sit with it. Later one of my honorary nieces, which is how I think of several different daughters of people dear to me, wanted to do a collage project. I had told her that I’m always drawn to collage, but I don’t feel I do it well. So we sat down together with my journal page from the museum and each constructed at least an homage to the Frankenthaler piece we had seen together. It was great fun to do, if nothing else.

Here are a couple of other pieces I loved at the Joslyn. I’ve always been a total sucker for Dutch still life paintings, and they had a lovely breakfast piece — well on the fancy end of that category. Pieter Claesz’s super simple ones are my very favorites, but I really enjoyed this one from 1630 by Jacob Fopsen van Es. I was also struck by a Madonna with Botticelli/Fra Lippo Lippi resonances by Lorenzo di Credi, c. 1490. The detail is exquisite. I’m going to flood this blog post with too many photos, so I’ll put up another couple of favorites in a post to follow. Too good not to share.

It's Inktober on social media for artists, and I've been covered up in Pink Palace Crafts Fair preparations lately, but I'm also trying to do an ink sketch or two every day. I took advantage of the gorgeous weather lately and rode my bike out to Shelby Farms park on the Green Line the other day. It was glorious. One of these times I need to sketch the buffalo, but that day I just did the Clark Tower off across the fields. I love my milk crate that carries sketching equipment (and snacks) as I get to new places I couldn't easily get to under my own power before. I'm new to biking, being a seriously late bloomer, but I'm having a ball.

Today I rode out to Dixon. It's one of my favorite destinations, so I'd been wanting to find a route I feel good about taking. It was fun to get there on my bike, see the current exhibitions, do a few sketches, and ride home by way of Burke's bookstore. A happy day.

I've been painting like crazy since I got home, and I don't tend to push myself to sketch if I'm making art exhaustively in another direction, but I did finally get my sketchbook back out Sunday, and it felt good. I had biked to church and found myself with extra time, since I usually walk instead. I wanted to do a quick sketch of the chapel with the paraments I had sewn a few years ago. It turned into a muddy mess, though. So after church I cycled over to the park to spend a little time before meeting friends for brunch, and I decided to add trees. Trees make everything better. It was fun to sit on the other side of the park than I usually do -- faster to get there on my bicycle.

Then I continued on to Overton Square for jazz brunch at Lafayette's. All three of Di Anne Price's "boyfriends" now play with a guitarist there every Sunday. I so miss Di Anne on piano and singing her songs, but it's good to still have Sunday music with the guys.

It's been a week, now. I did an artist market on Sunday, hung my main show of the year on Wednesday, and had the opening last night. It's lovely to see it all dressed up and on the wall. I've been showing bits of this edible still life exhibition along the way. It was my fun summer project, just grabbing something at a market or bakery and painting it without thinking too hard. I've always loved still life, and I've always loved the small things that together build daily happiness, so this show was a lot of fun to do. It's also the 20th anniversary of my first ever professional show, at Cecelia Lin Gallery, which is the last time I've done an exclusively still life show. It felt right to do one again and think about how lucky I am to do what I love every day. I'm so grateful for the whole tribe of folks who show up, spread the word, and sometimes even buy art. It was lovely to celebrate with friends last night.

I've had a number of requests to do a calendar again for 2020 after taking 2019 off. I was busy last year, but also the last calendar I did had a bunch fewer orders than previously. There were a lot of local artists doing calendars last year, and I wasn't sure if folks were tired of mine. This year I decided to assemble the art and take online orders. If I get enough orders to make it worth the printing costs and amount of time it takes, I'll go ahead and get it printed. If I don't get enough orders, I'll cancel all orders (well ahead of any credit cards being charged). So here's your chance if you want a calendar for 2020. Go ahead and put your order in now on my website, and if I get enough, it will happen. I'll say again that NO CHARGES WILL GO THROUGH AT ALL unless I actually get the calendar in hand and have it ready to distribute. You can "vote" and place your order at my online store.

www.squareup.com/market/martha-kelly-art

Calendars are $18 again this year, and choose from the website for pick up (if you're local and willing to pick up from me in Midtown) or shipping for 1, 2, or 3.

The group of images for this year is brand new -- no repeats from previous years (as always).

I'm slowly scanning in at least my favorites from my sketchbook, so I thought I'd write about my last day. I had finished the work I needed to do there (still lifes for my September show and sketches for a graphic essay I'm planning), so I treated myself with another beautifully quiet morning at the Orsay and lunch at one of my favorite bakeries. It was amazing (and emotional) to stand with this self portrait by Vincent for 45 minutes, practically on my own. Two couples came through, saw it, and left. Otherwise it was just Vincent and me. Usually this piece is five people deep with everyone trying to take selfies. I felt so privileged to spend this quiet time with it. I've been thinking about self portraits a lot, had been doing some of my own (an annual Paris occupation for me) and had already done my study of Berthe Morisot's stunning one. I couldn't catch Vincent's likeness, and the background got a bit too dark, but it was wonderful to look at it deeply as I did the copy.

My friend Beth Rowlett so kindly made me a watercolor kit especially for this kind of sketching. It's attached to a wristband with heavy velcro, so I don't have to juggle the paint box as well as the book and water brush when I'm standing up in a museum. I like to sketch from a bench when I can, but there aren't benches everywhere I want to draw. You can see that I use the left side of the page to test colors or blot my brush as needed.

I also did a copy of a Bonnard painting. One of many things I love about the Orsay is that it has an absolute host of paintings of women and dogs. This one is completely charming, with their heads so intimately together. It speaks of the love in that relationship, and I was missing Mr. Darcy. I'd meant to copy it two or three years ago but hadn't gotten around to it that first summer of spending time here. Then it disappeared. The Orsay rotates paintings regularly. So when it reappeared this summer, I knew I had to take the opportunity.

I have a new art hero. The Orsay had a solo retrospective of Berthe Morisot while I was there, and I was transfixed. I’ve always been drawn to her paintings when I’ve seen them, but (unlike so many of the other Impressionist painters who seem to be ubiquitous), there just aren’t that many out there in museums. A telling fact in this show was that fully half the paintings were in private collections, which was a shocking percentage. What it means is that museums weren’t collecting her when they were eagerly buying up works by her male peers. Monet is in a category all his own for me — he invented a new way of painting, and while all artists (especially prolific ones) produce some uneven paintings, every period of his work is fully realized and exquisite, which is not something you can say about all artists. Even great ones. But I feel that Morisot holds her own with any of the other Impressionists and more than outdoes some of them.

I spent a lot of the show tearing up, frankly. It was amazing to read that she began showing at the Salon, the pinnacle of the French art establishment, at the age of 33 and continued to do so for a decade, barring one year when they rejected both her submitted works. I kind of doubt it’s a coincidence that that year was the same year she also showed in the very first Impresssionist show (called the New Painting). She exhibited with that group as well for all eight years of their organized shows. She participated with them against the advice of male painter friends, including Manet. She knew what she wanted for herself, and she went for it. She also continued painting under her own name even after her marriage to Manet’s brother. I have to think it would have been advantageous for her to assume that well known name, but she wanted to paint under her own name on her own terms.

Morisot was written off by many for painting mostly domestic scenes, much like her contemporary Mary Cassatt. But Degas painted a ton of interiors and women at their own daily lives scenes and never got downgraded for it. Even more, Vuillard made a career of interior, domestic scenes, but it’s ok if you’re a man. Morisot’s work reminded me of Vuillard and the Nabis as well as of the other Impressionists. Both groups of artists looked at Japanese prints and worked on compositions echoed the flat picture plane of those prints. Vuillard and Morisot both went further and echoed a lot of the surface pattern found in many of the prints. Look at this fragment by Vuillard on the left (it’s part of a huge piece, so I couldn’t get it all) and a very early portrait of two sisters by Morisot. I’m also adding a second, very typical Vuillard that has both the sense of pattern and the domestic interior theme.

Morisot subverted the domestic conventions, though. She painted women at work, even if it was the domestic work in her home and in her circle. These women have more dignity and power than many of the other Impressionist paintings of women at work in cabaret settings, where they were often victimized by men. She also painted her husband and her daughter repeatedly. In a striking role reversal, these pieces show her husband entertaining and caring for their daughter while she is the one at work. It was a quietly revolutionary act.

Her self portrait as an artist, holding her palette and looking out at the viewer full of self confidence, moved me greatly. I did a small sketch of it in my journal. I couldn’t catch the likeness, but it was good to spend that time looking deeply. I also enjoyed studying the way she used paint. One contemporary art critic called her “the angel of the incomplete.” Her brushwork depicts objects with a spare, graceful economy of paint. She catches the essence of things quickly without overworking, and she uses the bare canvas in bold and radical ways. Apparently not everyone understood this, and that very boldness was denigrated as feminine tentativeness and indecision. Some thought she was afraid or unable to push her pieces across the finish line. But she knew exactly what she wanted from each canvas and didn’t feel the need to keep working to appease some outside sense of what a painting should look like. She said what she wanted to, and she left it to stand.

I especially loved the paintings of her daughter Julie. These late ones have an almost Munch-like feel to them to me. Morisot nursed Julie through influenza before dying of it herself, far too young. I would have loved to see where her art took her next. Please excuse the glare on these shots. They’re all just my camera phone as I passed through the exhibit, but I wanted to show you some of the pieces I saw and let you get a taste of the show.