HELLO!

Welcome to my new blog! I am excited to be reaching out and rejoining the human race. I say this because recently I have chosen to pursue my need for creating visual arts on a more regular basis and I have taken a goodly amount of time to myself defining just what that means to me.

First, you might like to know who I am. I am Kelly Arbogast Maines. I was born and raised in Indiana, educated in California and West Virginia, and have continued to travel in-between these locations. I have created graphic visual arts for a living as well as other means of support and I have painted sporadically along my way and all my life.

Although I have created many compelling flyers and social media posts, these outlets were not enough to express the visual stories that I have been holding inside. As I write this, I find it hard to choose the right words to explain that feeling. Those of you who are artists I am sure know what I mean. A very long artist block.

All these years, throughout my travels, I have been packing my paints with me. Maybe I’ll get inspired here, I’d say. Maybe I will get 5 seconds to think. Finally, after much meditation and self-searching and practice and research, and words of inspiration from my mentors, I am ready to go!

I am so excited at the changes that have happened in accessing the art world. At my fingertips are endless ideas and inspirations that took days of hands-on research to find before, if ever. My past influencers included the likes of Alice Neel, Judy Chicago, Sigmar Polk, Cindy Sherman, as well as the classics: Rembrandt, Van Gough, etc. All great artists of course, but I had no idea there was a whole community out there with ideas not defined by a select few critics or art dealers, or museum reps. The same group that narrowly defined art by who you knew, the color of your skin, and what was between your legs. Such access creates a power of message and membership in the world community that many of us never imagined could ever exist. This is truly a gift.

So, is my art any good? I am a practitioner and each day is a learning experience. Some will be successful even. Through this exploration, I become a better version of the artist I was yesterday. Life is a journey after all.

Circling Life 1992 - One of two paintings from my BFA graduating show

So welcome to my blog. Here, I will be sharing with you experiences from my continuing journey, such things as experiments both successful and failed, techniques and ideas. Let's talk about Art. I've always been fascinated by the modernists saying that painting was done after the color fields, or am I quoting that wrong. Also, where is art going? Will future art be only digital? I've got a million of them! Also, I hope you will reach out to me. I look forward to your thoughts and stories. In fact, it's why I am doing this blog. I want to hear from you.

Thanks for listening!

~Kelly