Current Work
2023 – present
Current work investigates themes of moving through air, playing with water, and practicing with intention.
Kelly McConnell, Off the Cushion, Oil on Canvas (2023), 4’x3’
Kelly McConnell, Cool the Onion, Oil on Canvas (2023), 24”x18”
Kelly McConnell, Bulgy, Oil on Panel (2023), 10’x10”
Kelly McConnell, Rear View (19/20), Oil on Panel (2023), 10’x10”
Kelly McConnell, Toe Grip, Oil on Panel (2023), 10’x10”
Kelly McConnell, Remember Night Falls, Oil on Panel (2023), 10’x10”
Kelly McConnell, Set, Oil on Panel (2023), 10’x10”
Kelly McConnell, Sitting, Oil on Canvas (2023), 10”x8”
Kelly McConnell, Experience With Air, Sumi Ink, Mixed Acrylic Media, Chalk, Graphite, Duct Tape, Paper (2023), 6’x4’11”
PRIOR WORK
Kelly McConnell, SPLAY: Self-Portrait Under Gaslighting (2019-2020), butcher paper, duct tape, chalk, sumi ink, acrylic mediums, specimen pins, 120" x 92" • Photography by Golaleh Yazdani, Able Baker Contemporary
Cosmic Being
These pieces are self-portraits as they are about me both internally and externally. For example, SPLAY: Self-Portrait Under Gaslighting was made parallel in my studio to working in a job for a year under untenable conditions and is a concrete rendering of me making sense of psychological distress and how it felt in my body.
When making mixed-media works, I utilize adaptive equipment invented in my studio, as well as chalk straight-line and other accessible materials that can be found in a hardware store. Playing off structure to create dimensionality, I use fluid liquids and transparent mediums to depict scale renderings of my own body and movements through space and time.
(2020–2022)
Kelly McConnell, Listening, oil on canvas (2018), 5' x 4'
Underlying Structure
The mark is the underlying structure of my paintings. In this body of work, the structure of the work is both implicit and explicit. It is implicit when the marks are buried, and witnessed on close inspection in multiple layers. Explicit structure is seen in works such as, Field and The Absence of Field (After Mark Strand) where the marks are both multiple and isolated, and in [Not Your] Cock Monkey where the mark is cut out and outlined. In the installation work, Fouled Air the painting is the structure itself, cut and formed to hold itself together.
(2016–2019)
Kelly McConnell, Plugging Up The Cloud, oil on canvas (2018), approx. 5' x 3'
Plugging Up The Cloud
Site specific Blame anchors this exhibition. Making this installation piece in my studio, I allowed the concrete imagery that was emerging out of my non-objective marks to take shape and remain.
(2005, 2016–2018)
Kelly McConnell, Its Inner Being, oil on canvas (2015), 60” x 48”
Tracks
These paintings are about the trails periwinkles leave behind on wet sand, exhaust fumes dancing on a sunny studio wall, and what footprints we may leave or find.
(2014–2015)
The Space In Between
Where I am is where something else is not. What is happening in the air between us if we believe it is not empty space? In this painting I contemplate these layers of existence.
