BIOGRAPHY
Kelly is a Contemporary Irish painter based on the shores of Lough Neagh, Ireland. Her work emerges as an intuitive, visceral response to her environment, memories, and emotions. Working primarily with acrylics, gouache, and oil pastels, Kelly’s marks are instinctive and expressive, focusing on colour, gestural mark-making, and texture.
Kelly graduated in 2004 with a BA (Hons) in Fine and Applied Art from the University of Ulster. After taking time away from her practice to raise her children, Kelly returned to painting in 2016 following a move to the countryside.
She has been shortlisted for prestigious awards, most notably the Jackson’s Art Prize 2025. Kelly has exhibited her work in Ireland and the UK, and her paintings are held in private collections across Ireland, the UK, Europe, and the USA.
Artist Statement
Kelly’s practice is rooted in emotion and memory, exploring the pull of certain places and objects and the ties that bind us to them. Her paintings weave together observation, memory, fleeting views from long car journeys, film stills, and music. These fragments are drawn together to form a deeply personal visual language.
In 2023, a life-threatening illness deepened Kelly’s inquiry, altering her relationship to time, place, and perception. During her recovery, walking in the countryside became central to her practice, with nature offering refuge, renewal, and healing. Her subject matter shifts between landscape, figure, and objects such as chairs, each carrying both personal and collective histories.
Within her paintings, Kelly seeks to simplify the image, stripping away the unnecessary to focus on feeling rather than description. Through intuitive, reworked layers of paint, she creates a personal, autobiographical space, inviting the viewer to pause, reflect, and experience a sense of place.