Cheryl Kelley

1. Cheryl Kelley was born in the late sixties when the feminist movement in America was starting. Kelley is an oil painter who paints a variety of images, however I am interested in her paintings of muscle cars. Growing up, she was aware that muscles cars were, “the last bastion of young male dominance. These big engine cars, seemingly fueled by raw testosterone, were ironically most definitely feminine in form”. Her paintings show a personal level of understanding of the female body. She uses oil paints to further push the sense of fluidity and sensuality of the muscle cars. In order to produce her works, Kelley take photographs at car shows and then manipulates certain aspects of the images to better suit her needs.

2. Two artists that I think whose work is similar to Kelley’s are Don Eddy and Martha Rosler. Kelley and Eddy are two artists who deal with reflective surfaces. Additionally both artists paint incredibly intricate images that have a lot of dimensionality to them. Rosler reminds me of Kelley because both women manipulate images. Rosler collages while Kelley changes photographs, both artists create new images.