about the artist
Kellie's work is focused on the natural
environment, mainly in Australia and Africa.
After completing qualifications in
commercial art Kellie worked as a graphic
designer as her first career step, but her inspiration has
always come from the bush so she soon moved from the commercial
world into environmental biology.
Here she could pursue a career
that contributed to conserving nature, as well as placing her in
the ideal environment to explore and develop her art.
A
brief trip to Africa in 1997 turned into ten years in Zambia,
where Kellie founded a long-term conservation and research
organisation focussed on large carnivores,
and gained a PhD in
conservation biology from the University of Sydney.
Alongside
her conservation work, Kellie has held highly
successful solo exhibitions in Sydney, completed several
painting commissions each year and her work hangs in private
collections internationally.
"Science and art come from the same
roots, they are both about focused observation and recording.
With biology you record, analyse and interpret but through a
carefully rationalised process. With art the observation is
just as intense but you have the freedom to interpret through
your personal perceptions and to communicate the way your
subject has inspired you. I think both art and science have an
important place in communicating the beauty and value of our
environment.
My artwork focuses on one species at a
time, rather than a typical scence with a diversity of birds
and animals. I try to capture an easily digestible taste of an
ecosystem, to explore one valuable component at a time and
emphasise its uniqueness and character. At the same time my
style mirrors the fragmentation and vulnerability that many
species currently face, they are no longer properly connected
to the life-support system and I often portray them out in a
vast and formless landscape."
