There is a lot of superb contemporary realism being made these days; this article shines light on a gifted individual.
Kelly Micca (b. 1998) paints portraits, self-portraits, and landscapes, and she also makes sculpture. This openness to creativity in all formats surely stems in part from her upbringing in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where she recalls pursuing “any excuse to turn a school assignment into art.” She inherited that enthusiasm from her mother, who created her own greeting cards, and soon the daughter was taking art to a new level.
A middle-school classmate “challenged me to draw a favorite rock musician,” Micca says. “It took me six months but came out so well I decided I should do this full-time.” Ultimately, her inspirational mother enrolled her in a series of two-week workshops in Rome: “I tried painting landscape for the first time in the Roman Forum. After that,” she laughs, “it’s hard to return to a normal lifestyle!”
The logical next step was to enroll at Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), where Micca found “everything I needed,” from helpful teachers to supportive classmates. “It’s easy to go 14 hours a day when your neighbor plays a banjo and sings while you work,” she says. “I don’t remember having time to watch any sunsets, but since graduating from PAFA I have made up for that by painting every possible sunset.”
It was also after PAFA that Micca learned to sculpt: “It’s like discovering that you have X-ray vision; it enhances the way you understand the world three-dimensionally. It has really helped my drawings and paintings feel more voluminous.” She also enjoys the physical demands that come with sculpting: “When I need a moment away from painting and want to keep my hands working, I go back to sculpture.”
Still, painting is never far from Micca’s mind: “I keep a paint box with me, ready to use, and I love biking around and stopping to paint. I have met so many people while painting outdoors. Whether I’m in the heat of the desert or the midst of a snowstorm, I always prefer to paint firsthand, though sometimes I run out of time and finish the work back in the studio.” It is also in the studio that Micca makes her self-portraits, a long, ongoing series that is, in her words, “a documentation of myself and of the artists I’ve been looking at.”
As for other artists, she especially admires those who “mystify the painting process.” Among them are the Philadelphia abstractionist Warren Rohrer (1927–1995) “for his meditative approach to laying down marks and for reminding me to paint the wrong color before finding the right one”; Emil Robinson (b. 1981) “for the way he composes a still life with strange and unassuming objects”; and Bethann Parker (b. 1984) for her “intuitive visual analogies and rich textural layering.”
Connect with the artist at www.kellymicca.com.
The editorial above is part of a series that spotlights the work of an accomplished contemporary artist featured in Fine Art Connoisseur magazine.
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Story prepared for the web by Cherie Dawn Haas, Editor of Fine Art Today
