Featured Artist Kelly Ufkin is the guest artist for Pop-Up beginning Thursday, December 2 to Monday, December 13. Read on to learn more about her inspiration, her process, and her work.
My paintings have taken on a more personal significance as I explore content that has importance to me, moving beyond the figure and still lifes. I am striving to obtain composition, balance, and color relations while experimenting with textures. Even though my intuitive responses occasionally stray from color accuracy, I want to maintain precision with perspective and proportion. I have realized that I am not a narrative artist but would like my viewers to experience a sense of escape.
My work has taken on new directions through the inspiration and study of artists that have impacted me, especially from the Impressionist era. Monet, Renoir, and Corot have enlightened me on how to really capture a moment in time in a simplistic manner. They give just enough indication and detail to portray a mood. Caravaggio and Artemisia Gentileschi’s realism and extensive technique have helped me enhance my style and progress as an artist. Modern painters such as the Wyeth family have provided me with motivation and insight.
My more recent paintings contain elevated complexities with composition, lighting, and contrast. The main focus is the distortion of images within water that converses with the concrete physicality of its surroundings. Rather than being inclusive of the standard formula of distribution between sky and land, I prefer to mostly deny the sky to allow water to be the primary element.
