Kelly Desrosiers

Unity - "I have spent many years absorbing the experiences and knowledge that I now attempt to express through my art. The earliest years were as a dreamy, artistic, bookish, loner child in the wetlands, forests, and flyways of northern Wisconsin. The second phase was exploring the world through jobs and travel: as a psychiatric technician, truck stop night shift waitress, migrant farm laborer, woods worker for the Alaska Forest Service, fieldworker for researchers studying eagles, bears, whales and blueberries, veterinary surgical technician, soil mapping, train-hopping, cycling and hitch-hiking on this continent and others, culminating along the way in a degree in Animal & Veterinary Science. Science was filling in the gaps in my mystical experience of the natural world, adding layers of understanding, grounding my poetic sensibility. A sharp left turn led to teaching art, an undergraduate degree in art (printmaking), Masters and MFA (sculpture), and the raising of a family, along with a small garlic farm in Unity, my home. I have lived in and created art in Maine for 42 years. Art had claimed me, in the end, full circle completed.

My acrylic collage-based paintings express the mystical energy of the natural world as I first knew it in childhood, and are created on cradled wood panels with printed tissue papers that I make myself with original stencils and stamps that I design myself. Multiple layers of transparent collage are combined with acrylic applied by brush, in glazes, or by liner pen as a means of drawing with paint. Layers are sanded periodically to “antique” and integrate the layered patterns. I view the overlapping of patterns as a proxy for the web of relationships in the natural world, both visible and invisible, and from micro to macro. The time-consuming finished works have strong compositions based on Maine landscapes and seascapes (sometimes flora or fauna) but also have layered depth, hidden visual surprises, and a unique textured surface. I also create watercolor/gouache paintings that are usually landscapes/seascapes but often delve into more abstraction. I mount these paintings on cradled panels and seal them with 7 coats of spray varnish to leave a protected but matte surface.

My website can be found at pointedfirsart.com. If you are interested, I have an artist’s talk recorded on video that is available through Waterfall Arts in Belfast, Maine. In the talk I show and describe my evolution and thought process as an artist."