Contemporary art gallery ATELIER will exhibit abstracted landscape paintings in a solo show scheduled to run from April 12 through May 18.
“By Feel: The Colorscapes of Mike Kelly” features the work of Indiana-native and colorist Mike Kelly. The show includes 18 oil paintings and 18 pastel works on paper, according to a news release from ATELIER.
As a colorist, Kelly’s primary focus is to use color to evoke mood, light, ambience, and composition. Kelly’s work highlights a sensual awareness of his own surroundings and the natural world, the release states. His virtuosity with hues manifests in painterly abstracted colorscapes. Kelly’s paintings are emotional moments in time, light and space, with titles like “Kissed It,” “Cloud,” “High Key” and “Rosy Glow.”
“Mike’s paintings use colors that are not representational of what our eyes typically perceive and process in natural landscapes,” ATELIER Director Sea Grandon said. “And yet, these paintings accurately portray the feeling of a landscape at a given time — the temperature, angle of light and amount of breeze or stillness in the air. While we associate color with seeing, here, the colors make us feel that which is real.”
Kelly was born in Warsaw in 1943, moved to Chicago for a career in commercial art and later returned home to dedicate himself to fine art painting. He and Grandon met by chance when the artist visited ATELIER. Seeing Kelly's work, Grandon says she was enchanted by the way he highlights the beauty and wonder that exists all around us if we are perceptive and open to it.
“To have an artist of this caliber walk into the gallery is a gift from the artistic gods," she said. "I am thrilled to show the art world and national collectors the paintings of this homegrown talent.”
In curating Kelly’s show, Grandon says she was drawn to the artist’s most abstracted works.
“Mike has been painting landscapes and experimenting with color and technique for decades,” she said. “When I look at his body of work, the most experimental pieces are the most compelling to me. His evolution from representational to abstracted work is exciting and reflects the spontaneity and freedom that all artists aspire to reach.”
Grandon says she was intrigued by Kelly as an artist because his work has progressed along with his own personal journey.
“Mike has chased many dreams in his life, but not all dreams can be pursued simultaneously,” Grandon says. “In this show, I believe we see both the discipline and learning that was required of him as a husband, father and provider and, now, the risk-taking and freedom of his latter years. This new work is bold and unfettered, the culmination of a romantic life well lived.”
“By Feel: Colorscapes by Mike Kelly” opens April 12 with a reception at 6 p.m. and runs through May 18. ATELIER’s hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays and 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.
Kelly was born and raised in Warsaw, Indiana. He graduated from Herron School of Art + Design in the 1960s and honed his technical and emotional knowledge of color as an award-winning designer and brand identity firm partner in Chicago. Now pursuing the purest form of his passion, Kelly is back in Winona Lake and at the easel. He has exhibited at numerous galleries and museums in the Midwest, and his work is featured in private collections throughout the United States.
ATELIER is a contemporary art gallery in Warsaw, owned and directed by Sea Grandon. Grandon is a contemporary art advisor and attorney. ATELIER is her first gallery.

“By Feel: The Colorscapes of Mike Kelly” features the work of Indiana-native and colorist Mike Kelly. The show includes 18 oil paintings and 18 pastel works on paper, according to a news release from ATELIER.
As a colorist, Kelly’s primary focus is to use color to evoke mood, light, ambience, and composition. Kelly’s work highlights a sensual awareness of his own surroundings and the natural world, the release states. His virtuosity with hues manifests in painterly abstracted colorscapes. Kelly’s paintings are emotional moments in time, light and space, with titles like “Kissed It,” “Cloud,” “High Key” and “Rosy Glow.”
“Mike’s paintings use colors that are not representational of what our eyes typically perceive and process in natural landscapes,” ATELIER Director Sea Grandon said. “And yet, these paintings accurately portray the feeling of a landscape at a given time — the temperature, angle of light and amount of breeze or stillness in the air. While we associate color with seeing, here, the colors make us feel that which is real.”
Kelly was born in Warsaw in 1943, moved to Chicago for a career in commercial art and later returned home to dedicate himself to fine art painting. He and Grandon met by chance when the artist visited ATELIER. Seeing Kelly's work, Grandon says she was enchanted by the way he highlights the beauty and wonder that exists all around us if we are perceptive and open to it.
“To have an artist of this caliber walk into the gallery is a gift from the artistic gods," she said. "I am thrilled to show the art world and national collectors the paintings of this homegrown talent.”
In curating Kelly’s show, Grandon says she was drawn to the artist’s most abstracted works.
“Mike has been painting landscapes and experimenting with color and technique for decades,” she said. “When I look at his body of work, the most experimental pieces are the most compelling to me. His evolution from representational to abstracted work is exciting and reflects the spontaneity and freedom that all artists aspire to reach.”
Grandon says she was intrigued by Kelly as an artist because his work has progressed along with his own personal journey.
“Mike has chased many dreams in his life, but not all dreams can be pursued simultaneously,” Grandon says. “In this show, I believe we see both the discipline and learning that was required of him as a husband, father and provider and, now, the risk-taking and freedom of his latter years. This new work is bold and unfettered, the culmination of a romantic life well lived.”
“By Feel: Colorscapes by Mike Kelly” opens April 12 with a reception at 6 p.m. and runs through May 18. ATELIER’s hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays and 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.
Kelly was born and raised in Warsaw, Indiana. He graduated from Herron School of Art + Design in the 1960s and honed his technical and emotional knowledge of color as an award-winning designer and brand identity firm partner in Chicago. Now pursuing the purest form of his passion, Kelly is back in Winona Lake and at the easel. He has exhibited at numerous galleries and museums in the Midwest, and his work is featured in private collections throughout the United States.
ATELIER is a contemporary art gallery in Warsaw, owned and directed by Sea Grandon. Grandon is a contemporary art advisor and attorney. ATELIER is her first gallery.