Patricia K. Kelly lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her abstract paintings and works on paper in tempera paint and natural pigments are after the Early Italian-Byzantine tradition. While at the San Francisco Art Institute, where she graduated with an MFA in painting, Kelly was the subject of Ryuichi Okubo’s documentary film, “Connections in Landscape”. Prior to the Art Institute she studied art at Dartington College, UK, painting with Silvio Loffredo at the Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence, and drawing at the Accademia di Belle Arti, Rome.
Kelly exhibits nationally and internationally. Her paintings were included in “Egg Tempera; an Enduring Tradition”, a contemporary survey show which toured East Coast museums and galleries for two years. She has also exhibited at CSU Chico, Samson Projects, Adobe Books, Triple Base, The Lab, Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco Zen Center, Walter and McBean Galleries, Simon Liu Gallery, MOCA, and the Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Awards and residencies include a PEO International Peace Scholarship, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco – Legion of Honor, Headlands Center for the Arts affiliate program, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Ireland, and Can Serrat, Spain. In 2006 Kelly was a finalist for the Dedalo International painting prize.
Kelly has also participated in collaborative projects with Artship Foundation, Broadsides Revisited, Synecdoche, Worlds in Collisions Website, and Capitalism Is Over – Summer of Tough Love.
Her work is in the di Rosa collection, Dartington Hall, the Estate of Sir Richard Sheppard, Silvio Loffredo and collections in Europe, Korea, and Tibet.
Her current work explores how contemplation relates to image formation.