Jonathan Kelly (b. 1988, Hereford, UK) is a painter of marked individuality, he employs a pictorial vocabulary that is simultaneously rich and reductive, self-referential and all-encompassing.
Through luminous colour, texture and the use of paired down recognisable symbols he explores - and questions - structures of shared human experience, consciousness and belief.
Kelly’s images feel discovered rather than painted; they emerge from multiple layers of colour whose order appears indistinguishable, as if the paint has suddenly illuminated and awakened timeless forms that lay beneath.
Image: Jonathan Kelly, Elastics (Pink), 2021, acrylic on canvas, 82 x 70 cm. © Jonathan Kelly, Courtesy of the Artist and Ione & Mann.
