Participating Artists

Kelly Reyna

Biography / Artist Statement

Born and raised in West Texas, I grew up admiring the works of Georgia O’Keefe, Frida Kahlo, Carmen Lomas Garza, the Old Masters, and Jose Guadalupe Posadas. Most of my younger years were spent drawing and sketching portraits, then later I discovered oil painting. Thereafter, I pursued the arts through education and graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Painting from Texas Tech University in 2011. In 2014 I took part in a year-long residency program through Plymouth University/Transart Institute. Since then, I have exhibited works in Ann Arbor, Michigan, New York, Berlin, Germany, and Lubbock, Texas. In recent years, I have engaged in the complex medium of needlework and embroidery and have become inspired by the meditative and repetitive techniques of stitched mark-making which has crossed over into my most recent paintings and drawings. I used these methods to translate the experience of motherhood through the struggles of Autism Spectrum Disorder in my recent graduate studies. I graduated in 2019 from Texas Tech University with the Masters of Fine Arts degree.