6-8 PM

If you haven’t yet heard of artist Kellie Romany, we’re happy to introduce you! Romany is an abstract painter interested in bodily representation, materiality, and the history of the painting process–this January we’re heading to her studio! 

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Using a color palette of skin tones, Romany creates objects that act as a catalyst for discussion about human connections, race, and the systems surrounding these themes. Our visit with the emerging artist is one that you won’t want to miss and a prime example of the kind of intimate access that EarlyWork membership provides. 

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ABOUT KELLIE ROMANY:

Romany received a Master of Fine Arts in Painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2008. Romany has exhibited both nationally and internationally, including museum shows at the High Museum of Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Albright-Knox Art Gallery Museum, and DePaul Art Museum.

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ARTIST STATEMENT:

My approach to painting is an equally intimate and physically consuming process of making, though the work itself can be seemingly bare and minimalist. I am fascinated by the materiality and properties of paint—its manipulation with outside influences, or lack thereof, within a work. The content of my artwork— abstracted bleeds, clots, rings, cracks, and rippling wave forms—aim to recall relationships between bodies, biology, and race. In my work, I look to the diversity of humanity for connections between our constantly shifting definitions of otherness, race, and belonging. Using a color palette of skin tones, I paint to create portraits of diversity that blur the lines of figure and non-representation.

Through my practice, I am owning not only the final choice of the colors exposed, but by process am able to show the physical histories of where the paint was coerced over time. Foregoing the artist's’ brush to push and pull color, I manipulate the paint by moving the clay board, paper, or ceramic with my own hands, watching for—rather than forcing—reactions and catching and re-distributing the movement and placement of color to build layers over time. The result is the revealing of a history, a landscape of buildup, erosion, stoppage and careening through the archive of the paint’s movement as a reaction to my body.

– Kellie Romany

6-8 PM