Someday This Will Be Illegal

Cynthia Ryan Kelly

Being a formalist painter, that is, having a primary interest in the formal visual elements, with a passion for abstraction, my paintings address both the inward approach to creating compositions wrapped in the external process of providing narratives.  I do not shy away from social commentary. SOMEDAY THIS WILL BE ILLEGAL is a reaction to the days of the ox-cart people (referencing the 1979 children’s book Ox-Cart Man by Donald Hall and Barbara Cooney) where all that is consumed and produced is done to its absolute.  

In other words,
no
waste.

For the past several years these thoughts have declared themselves in my work as geometric yet biomorphic shapes read as fantastical machines.  Drones, but good.  As opposed to the current technology of storing carbon dioxide underground, these guys are cleaning up the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  The almost maniacal repetition of these shapes can be reflective of the urgency of this matter.  

I wash plastic bags and store plastic packaging.  I am my own landfill in some ways.  This show could be titled “The End of the Great Industrial Experiment”.   

Years ago an artist told me, “You paint fantasies.”   It was before noon.  

About the Artist: After being raised in the progressive architectural prairie town of Columbus, Indiana,  I was trained in the visual arts at Miami University of Ohio (BFA) and University of Kentucky (MFA) and have received several grants, taught art on all levels, sometimes present a dissenting voice in public art venues and was even once the Gallery Director at Lexington Art League.   Lexington has been mostly my home since before LexArts shortened its name and when the current president was just a nasty landlord in NYC.​