About Pat Kelly

Pat’s commissioned work includes dogs, cats, chickens, tigers, pigs, buffalo, and, of course, horses. Her primary mediums are pastel and oil. Her work has been shown nationally at the American Equine Artist Show and Art at the Dog Show and has been juried into many regional shows. In addition, her equine art has appeared on the covers of The Chronicle of the Horse and on numerous horse show programs and posters.

After graduation from Stephens College, she continued her studies at The Art Students League. Under the tutelage of the famous anatomy teacher, Robert Beverley Hale, she received positive direction in comparative anatomy. “I am forever grateful for his direction, inspiration and encouragement,” she says.

More formal training was continued over the years at the Woodstock School of Art where she studied with the painters Staats Fasoldt, Rick Pantell and Zhang Hong Nian. More recently she has been studying artistic anatomy with Keith Gunderson. Pat is an admirer of the great illustrators Howard Pyle and Fredric Remington and of the painters Winslow Homer, Joaquin Sorolla and Wolf Kahn. In both animal and figure painting she has always been greatly inspired by Theodore Gericault and Eugene Delacroix.

For over 40 years Pat has been professionally involved in the horse industry as a competitor, breeder, instructor, trainer, and dressage judge. These experiences led her to co-author the book, Horse Around The House, published by Crown, for which she also did over 200 illustrations.

For four years, Pat was resident manager of a large Arabian horse farm. As a result of exposure to some of the most beautiful horses in the world and travels in this the United States, Holland, and Russia, Pat found that she was mentally gathering and storing images. “Viewing these living works of art was a catalyst for depicting the beauty and spirit of all horses and setting down my impressions on paper and canvas,” she says.

As Pat has been focused more on the human figure she's become more involved in creating people in contemporary life situations with a particular affinity for placing them in water settings. She recently completed a successful one-woman exhibition at the Art Society of Kingston in Kingston NY.