Kelly Stevenson: HOW FAR I’VE FALLEN

Blyth Festival Art Gallery

razing landscapes #113, Kelly Stevenson

August 18 – September 9, 2023
Reception: August 19, 2023 at 6 pm
Blyth Festival Art Gallery
431 Queen Street, Blyth, Ontario

The Blyth Festival Art Gallery is thrilled to present the work of local up and coming artist Kelly Stevenson who is returning to the gallery which presented her first solo exhibition in 2014.

Through a multi-disciplinary exhibit, entitled “HOW FAR I’VE FALLEN”, Stevenson uses the changing state of the rural landscape and experience to explore her own state of mind-one of living with severe and chronic mental illness. Finding a kinship with the abandoned and falling down buildings that fill the countryside, she explores if there is life and hope in the debris and darkness, and of life beyond illness, beyond the seemingly never ending falling apart.

I ONCE HAD SO MUCH PROMISE-IS THIS ALL I’LL EVER BE, Kelly Stevenson

About the Artist

Kelly Stevenson is an award-winning artist and graduate of OCADU’s Drawing and Painting program in 2012. She is currently based out of Blyth, Ontario.

Her practice is multi-disciplinary including drawing, painting, installation and fibre art. Topics range from mental health to rural life, to religion, to memory and nostalgia, to technology and human connections. Much of her work has a social and/or political undertone with which she strives to use to open a dialogue between the viewer, the work and society at large. She also uses her art practice as a way to understand the world we live in and her place in it.

Taking inspiration from Nancy Spero, John Scott, German woodblock prints, Daniel Johnston, Henry Darger, outsider art, craft and graphic novels, her work often carries a naive and graphic aesthetic, appearing simple but complex in nature.

She believes art should be accessible to people of all economic backgrounds and also produces affordable art in the form of zines, prints, stickers, bags, and tshirts along with calendars, pins and greeting cards.

Blyth Festival Art Gallery

A vibrant and integral part of the Blyth Centre for the Arts, The Blyth Festival Art Gallery is housed in the Bainton Gallery. The Gallery is physically attached to Blyth Community Memorial Hall.

The Blyth Festival Art Gallery is operated by an enthusiastic group of art-loving volunteers.