kelly.roe@oswego.edu
Bio
Kelly Roe, Baldwinsville, NY, holds an MFA from Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester NY. She is a Professor of Art at State University of New York College at Oswego where she teaches printmaking, bookarts and graphic design. Her work has been exhibited in numerous shows in the U.S. and is represented in a variety of private collections.
Statement
I have always been intrigued with the beauty and quiet complexity of perception. Visual, tactile, olfactory, the sensory involvement that leads to awareness, to an acknowledgement that something exists. I’m taken with, not only the struggle to find words that can describe, but also the employment of linguistics and semantics to obfuscate or exaggerate. Subtle. Complex. Transparent. Opaque. It is this multiplex of comprehension that provides me with a way to structure the investigation that becomes the core of my work.
The use of allegorical symbols to demonstrate the inner workings of human existence has for centuries provided the artist with the opportunity to give shape and meaning to an irrational world. With the arrival of my children, my own private worldview shifted into a cascade of allegorically saturated moments, constantly serving as a gentle reminder that everything is relational. For one thing, I re-discovered that as I change, my perception and interpretation of the world around me changes as well. Through my children’s eyes I am reminded that no matter how much I think I know something, there is always a different perspective that can change my understanding.
My recent work explores issues around society’s relationship to “consumables,” whether material and object based or with regards to our relationships to others. While personal in some instances, I am especially interested in exploring the dualities and pluralities. For example, the way in which one set of behaviors and/or responses are appropriate in one instance while inappropriate in another. My work also explores the use of “modifiers” in the English language that change the meaning of a word. As a response, I create visual narratives that twist the words back to its root definition.