September Artist of the Month: Kelly Magee

Kelly Magee is a Louisiana artist whose subject matter is steeped in the sights and sounds that have surrounded her while growing up in the deep South. She earned a degree in Fine Arts as well as an addition certification in fine art restoration.

While much of her work centers on easily collectable, smallish acrylic and sometimes gold leaf pieces, she has recently begun to revisit her earlier life, where she created larger oil paintings that would most comfortably fall under the descriptive, contemporary narrative expressionist work. Short meaning, larger work that tends to tell a story. In the artist’s thinking, her two veins of work complement each other well. The smaller production pieces can often work like studies that will ultimately make their way into larger works. Small paintings of birds, farm life, or other recognizably southern sights and sounds that all come from memories of growing up among the rich texture of New Orleans and more generally, the entire southern and coastal region.

Kelly has commercial installations in several locations around the country, the most recent being two large scale oil paintings in Louis Armstrong Airport, Delta Sky Lounge. She has done hundreds of private commission pieces. She considers herself blessed that after 40 years of making art professionally, she continues to find some success in what she considers the best job there is.