Lloyd Kelly is an internationally acclaimed artist whose paintings are rendered in an honest, straight-forward style, characterized by acute observation and meticulous technique. The results are paintings that bound forward with forcefulness and originality.

Kelly was born in 1946 in New Orleans and began his art studies at the University of Nebraska, where in 1973 he obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Drawing, and then a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts and Printmaking from the University of Guanajuato, Mexico in 1975. Soon after, he attended the Arts Students League in New York City and finally traveled to Europe for museums studies at the Louvre and Tate Gallery.

Most of Lloyd Kelly’s paintings are about nature. Lush verdant gardens, singular flowers, equestrian subjects, brilliant landscapes and still lifes. A painting of a flower seems to float in space, with a slim, delicate stem, but at the same time, is gracefully supported by its intense background. His landscapes have strong colors dueling and yet, it all has a natural feeling. He also seems to create a sense of stillness and quiet in his compositions. “I try to achieve a balance in my work by using imagery that can be understood by anyone and at the same time, communicating an idea.” A landscape, for example, may offer a view of a green field with trees and one can appreciate it as a depiction of nature. But the landscape may also say something more, something about the fragile beauty of nature and our need to conserve it, something about the wonder of creation and the ease of man’s destruction.”

When viewing Lloyd’s paintings, there is clear evidence that he is a colorist. He uses strong, bold colors that vibrate and create depth. The tremendous depth is achieved by the classical technique of underpainting. He begins by painting the entire canvas with colors on the opposite side of the color wheel. For example, the brilliant blue of the summer sky is underpainted with bright orange; the rich purple of a lilac field is underpainted with bright yellow. At first glance, the underpainting is not obvious because the viewer’s eye mixes the color, thus participating with the artist in his creation. Lloyd balances and harmonizes these colors, so that the overall effect is surprisingly delicate.

“There exists in my work, as in all art, a balance between depiction versus abstraction and imagery versus ideas. I am more interested in abstraction and ideas, than depiction and imagery. However, if a painting is entirely abstract, its idea, its meaning, is lost on most of us. And if a painting is nothing but depiction, it is merely illustration, flat and boring.”

During the early summer of 1999, Lloyd participated in a teaching tour of Provence, where he spent weeks painting and instructing several students. The paintings from this tour were the focus of an exhibition at The Christina Gallery in August of 1999. More recently Lloyd completed a commission mural for the Labrot and Graham Distillery Visitors Center in Versailles, Kentucky. In 2004 he was invited to exhibit his work at the Kentucky Museum of Art and Design in Louisville, Kentucky.

Lloyd Kelly has exhibited extensively in galleries and museums in the United States, Europe, Mexico, Russia and Asia. His paintings have been displayed in the United States Embassies in Ireland, Denmark, the Czech Republic and India as part of the Art in Embassies Program, and also, in many corporate and private collections throughout the world. He is a member of The National Arts Club in New York City, The Arts Club in Washington D.C. and the American Academy of Equine Art.