Daniel Kelly

About the Artist

Daniel Kelly was born in Idaho Falls, Idaho and grew up in Great Falls, Montana. He then attended university in Oregon. Before leaving for Japan over twenty five years ago, he spent $1.95 on the only art book he could afford. At the back of this small book by the woodblock print artist Tokuriki was an invitation, “if the reader of this book has a chance to visit Kyoto, feel free to contact the author.” Daniel Kelly went to Kyoto and learned traditional Japanese woodblock printing from Tokuriki.

Kelly is an exciting artist with and ever-changing style. All of his prints from the last several years have some element of mixed media, including woodblock, lithography, cement block printing, chine colle and hand coloring.

Kelly says of his process, “I really do not like it if I have a concept — it does not exist yet — and people say you are going to run into this and that problem. I want to slap those people out of my way. If there is a problem, I dig deeper. Painting and creative printmaking is like war. I get in there and battle and fight. It is either me or the image. One of us will win.”

About Printmaking

“In the Kyoto studio prints are made on a variety of papers including antique Japanese book pages and papers I import from Nepal, Thailand and the Philippines. These papers are combined in what is known as chine-collé at different stages of the printing process. Carving wood blocks and printing is done by myself and my assistants using water based pigments. On top of this I sometimes add lithography in professional print studios in Japan and the U.S.A. I believe I have created the largest wood block prints ever made in Japan.” – Daniel Kelly

Daniel Kelly has had many exhibitions, mainly in the United States and Japan, and is represented in the following collections: The British Museum, London, The Brooklyn Museum, New York, Cleveland Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia, Portland State University, Oregon and the National Museum of American Art, Washington.

Kelly has lived and worked in Kyoto, Japan since 1977.

Prints














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