Kay Kelison's Gallery

Artist Statement: 

KEO (°1964, Carmichael, United States) makes paintings, drawings and mixed media artworks. By applying abstraction, KEO tries to increase the dynamic between audience and author by objectifying emotions and investigating the duality that develops through different interpretations.

Such abstract expressionists, including Elaine de Kooning, Picasso, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler and Alma Thomas, have influenced her work. My work brings such dimensional poses. These images are distorted by the curves, emotions, colors, etc. Lines through out the images add strength in movement within each piece of mine. Colors... vibrant, bold, painful, joyful, enliven these images with multifaceted of my emotions that move through me when I paint. A kaleidoscope effect is evoked, a world where colors fill every void of the human mind. Profound is the effect of pieces on the viewer - at first stimulated, almost overwhelmed by the interplay, the dance of colors on the canvas; the realization of the image brings into the viewers memories, lost loved ones, private intimate moments within each piece.

Her works are notable for their perfect finish and tactile nature. By examining the ambiguity and origination via retakes and variations, she creates work through using color as a process for which can be seen explicitly as a personal exorcism ritual.  The results are deconstructed to the extent that meaning is shifted and possible interpretation becomes multifaceted. By choosing mainly formal solutions, she touches various overlapping themes and strategies. Several reoccurring subject matter can be recognized, such as the relation with popular culture and media, working with repetition, provocation and the investigation of the process of expectations.

Her works establish a link between the landscape’s reality and that imagined by its conceiver. These works focus on concrete questions that determine our existence. With Plato’s allegory of the cave in mind, she makes work that deals with the documentation of events and the question of how they can be presented. 

Her works are often classified as part of the new pop romantic movement because of the desire for the local in the unfolding globalized world. However, this reference is not intentional, as this kind of art is part of the collective memory. KEO currently lives and works in Sacramento.