Mr. Kelley is an artist whose entire life's work is devoted to creating a contemporary interpretation of the classical tradition in western civilization. This ambition is expressed through a series of paintings inspired by Greek mythology, as well as a study of the uniqueness of the human individual through the genre of portraiture. Mr. Kelley's attraction to Greek mythology is born of the belief that it embodies everything that is timeless about the human experience, and therefore is worthy of an interpretation expressing our own age.
Mr. Kelley dates the beginning of his interest in classicism to the time when, at age six, his parents took him to the world's only full scale replica of the Greek Parthenon in the capital of his home state, Nashville, Tennessee. The human oriented proportions of that building, and the canon of beauty expressed in the collection of plaster casts of the great fifth century b.c. statues by Polykleitos and Pheidias which are inside, began his lifelong ambition to express the classical tradition. Mr. Kelley took a degree in art history from the University of Tennessee and a degree in architecture from Pratt Institute in New York before turning to the study of painting and drawing at the Art Students League and the New York Academy in New York. His Principal teacher was Mr. Ted Jacobs, who teaches the precepts of the academic tradition, with it's emphasis on accurate drawing and the study of anatomy. Mr.Jacobs now presides over his own school in the south of France.
During the course of his career Mr. Kelley has received commissions from such institutions as the Morgan Library, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and Yale University. Mr. Kelley has shown his work at, among others, the John Pence Gallery in San Francisco, Ca., and Fischbach Gallery in New York, and is currently showing in the More Gallery in Philadelphia, Pa., and Pandora Old Masters in Milan, Italy. His work is represented in the private collections of the senior vice president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mr. Ashton Hawkins, and the writers, Mr. Reynolds Price and Mr. David Halberstam. His work has been published in the New York Times, the American Arts Quarterly, the Italian magazine,"Amica", and the architectural publication,"The Classicist." Mr. Kelley is a fellow of the Morgan Library, and a fellow of the Institute of Classical Architecture. He divides his time between his studios in New York City and Knoxville, Tennessee.
Mr. Kelley's conviction about the perennial relevance of classicism to human sensibility, and his determination to create a body of work expressing a contemporary interpretation of that tradition, places him squarely in the growing body of artists who are rebelling against the meaningless gimmickry and vacuity of modernism in the visual arts. The writer Tom Wolf recently predicted in the New York Times that the modern giants so touted today by the art mafia will be as forgotten in the coming century as the great academic masters once were in the last. Mr. Kelley firmly believes that the truly revolutionary art of the twenty-first century will not only employ the universal language of representationalism, but will also embody a spiritual continuity with the great classical tradition of humanity.
Statement of Intent
The Greek myths embody everything that is timeless about the human experience. They reveal truths and acknowledge mysteries. They survive in the subconscious of Western man to the point that to learn about them is to experience a shock of recognition. They have been a successful vehicle for man's pursuit of self knowledge for countless generations, which is the reason I have chosen to make yet another interpretation of them through my paintings. Each generation has been inspired to a unique interpretation, and I have tried to present the old myths in a new way, showing all the irony and conflict of the modern world. The figures are contemporary, but the situations are ancient. It is a way of saying,"we are new, but we are old," "we are young, but we must die". History continually humbles the arrogance of man. The Greek myths tell us that this is our fate as well as our redemption.
John Woodrow Kelley
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