* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
Kelly Grace’s paintings might be described as close-up views of faraway feelings. Appearing by turns like stills from a classic film, anonymous Polaroids in a found album, or half-remembered flashes of a recurring dream, they wander the misty spaces between memory and fiction. This task also leads Grace to imbue her work with a sense of autonomy, often using themes of mystery, desire, and strength to portray women in the leading roles of their own lives. Other symbolic and cinematic cues—the cold reflection in a pair of reading glasses, a closed hand on a rotary phone receiver, a sidelong glance through a rear view mirror—are narrative openings, road signs we might follow to imagine the story unfolding beyond the frame. Whether mnemonic, melancholic, or both, Grace’s painted worlds are all about perception: the lenses through which we look backward, forward, and inward.
