The Red and Black

Issue date: 3/18/09 Section: Variety

Media Credit: JIM DIFFLY Kelly Rains, a painting major, often creates an alternate reality in her work. [Click to enlarge]

Editor's Note: Every Wednesday, Red & Black writer Katie Andrew will profile a different local artist. This is the third installment of the series.

Evocative figures with sinister expressions, bright colors smeared betwixt dark patterns, trails of black ink that dodge hulking shapes - all circumscribed only by the dimensions of a canvas.

Welcome to Kelly's world.

"My paintings tend to be on the darker side, but I think there's a beauty in the darker side of things," said 22-year-old painting major Kelly Rains.

Though acrylic paint is typically her weapon of choice, Rains likes to play around with ink and watercolor.

"[In my art] I have these reoccurring figures, and I guess I consider them my 'people,'" she said. "They tend to be kind of mourning in mass. They're always in a group, never alone."

Rains said that she is compelled to create an alternate reality in order to deal with her own, and that urge generates much of her artistic motivation.

An Athenian from birth, Rains began cultivating her artistic talent with art and theater classes through the Lyndon House and ACC Leisure Services when she was young.

"I didn't pick up art again until I was in high school, but I did a lot more rendering and working from pictures. I didn't have my own voice or even really know what that meant."

Rains said that all changed in the fall of 2007.

"[I was taking] my second painting class, and I wasn't being forced to work with oil or learn a technique. My teacher, Judith McWillie, really pushed me to paint big."

Rains said McWillie's influence resulted in some "crazy paintings," but the opportunity to experiment was well worth stepping out of her comfort zone.

"I'm always thinking about my own life," Rains said. "I'm really interested in human interaction. The good and the bad, the pain - it's fascinating. I try to tap into what's happened to me in my life."

Rains credits a fateful day in the Netherlands for the "ah-ha moment" that changed her life and art forever.

"The summer before I started really painting, I went backpacking in Amsterdam. There was a Max Beckmann exhibit - he's a German expressionist painter - and it changed my life," she said.

"I was in awe of it."

After the rise of Hitler, Beckmann was forbidden to create modern art and lived the rest of his life in self-imposed exile.

Rains said that knowing the artist's painful history made the exhibit all the more meaningful.

"Seeing his paintings and knowing where they came from changed my life," Rains said. "[After that] I got a lot bolder. I wasn't scared to just lay it down."

Rains, who is scheduled to graduate this semester, is keeping her eye on the prize.

"I'd like to be a working artist, and I know what that takes. I might be 30 or 40 or 50 before that happens, but I'm willing to stick it through."

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