JUAN KELLY
Perceptions from Light and Structures
Juan Kelly’s latest paintings will be shown in the exhibition Perceptions from Light and Structures at Nüart Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, May 10 through 26. In these new paintings his familiar subjects of horses, cows and lions in the landscape become more form than the allegories we see in his earlier work. The gallery notes that the paintings “bring forward the entirety of the figurative elements and spatial structures…to create images with multiple perceptual points of view; where all the components play a fundamental role in the overall composition.”
“These paintings are about the joy of form and shape,” Kelly says. “I have intense ideas with exotic strange things happening in my paintings, but in many of these new paintings I didn’t want anything too strange that would distract from the forms and the light. I’m always bound by reality but I push it a little bit in the more fantastical paintings but they always appear as being possible. I’m always more interested in the compositional element in all of my paintings.”
In Reflections, a horse canters into the frame of the 68-by-84-inch canvas and its reflection is caught in a translucent mirror that also allows a view of the scene behind it. “Horses, trees and nature have been done before,” he says. “I’m trying to deal with that mundane kind of thing but the essence of creativity is how do you do something different with something that’s been done forever? I didn’t want the painting to be too strange, just to create a different level of perception of form and light.”
Three beautiful white horses greet the day in Morning Sounds, prancing as if to the rhythm of the lines of trees and their shadows. There is no message. There are no distracting elements. “I want the viewer to feel the beauty of the whole thing,” Kelly explains. “My whole goal is to create something intoxicatingly beautiful.”
Nüart Gallery 670 Canyon Road • Santa Fe, NM 87501 • (505) 988-3888 • www.nuartgallery.com