Bio

Born and raised in and around Milwaukee, WI, Kelli graduated from UW-Milwaukee with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in both Painting and Metalsmithing. After completing school she worked at the Milwaukee Art Museum for thirteen years as an Art Preparator/Gallery Technician. This was a fine job, but not the life-long calling she had been searching for.  Mentally ready to take the plunge, Kelli became a full-time professional Artist in 2014. Oil painting has become her main passion, creating colorful illustrative landscapes.

​​

Artist Statement

Color.  Nature.  Outdoors.  These three words describe what you will find in my paintings and the inspiration behind my work.  They are the forces that drive me to create art.  In doing so I hope to convey feelings of peace, joy, and rejuvenation by sharing my visions of what surrounds us.​

​

Artistic Style

My paintings are created traditionally, using brushes to apply oil paint to a stretched canvas.  What's with all the outlines you ask?  The unique look of my art is what I like to describe as “illustrative painting.”  A lot is going on in nature and it can easily be missed.  I'm attempting to give each object and layer more attention and appreciation by breaking it down into individual parts.  Clouds are in the sky, but separate from it, just as a tree is part of the landscape, and leaves are part of the tree.

 

My specific technique for painting was not something I was taught in school; I happened upon it with experimentation and a vision of what I wanted the finished painting to look like.  I start by covering the entire canvas with black gesso primer paint.  After that is dry, I use oil paints to create individual objects such as a tree, cloud, or rock.  The black outlines of the objects are created by letting areas of the original gesso layer show through.  The look of the finished painting is somewhat of a hybrid between traditional painting and graphic art illustrations.