Oil Painting by John Kelley

Here are some photo’s of my work space for those of you who are interested in where I work. I spent 10 years as a full time artist before I was able to build this. It is the first time I have worked in such an isolated space and as a people person I’ve actually found it difficult at times to spend my entire day at my studio, but it certainly is a nice place to work.

I built this in about six months, for the most part by myself. (Some folks from my church came out and put the insulation in and helped paint the porch. I am very grateful to have such a good community). Looking back I would have hired someone else to build due to all the painting time I lost.

I still have a lot of work to do on the landscape.

I’ve tried three different set ups for working on my small still life paintings and I am still not satisfied. Sitting hurts my back. Standing cuts my painting day in half. What I probably need is an exercise program.

This is when I first moved into the studio. Look how clean it is! That didn’t last.

The rack above the painting is where I store my canvases and my failures. If I pull a painting down after a year, and I still hate it, then I paint over it. I once burned a stack of paintings I thought were bad and my family got REALLY mad at me. Everyone occasionally paints a worthless painting. There’s no sense leaving the turkeys around for people to judge you by.