Paul Kelly

Paul Kelly is a practicing full time artist living in Provincetown with deep ties to the Provincetown Art Association and Museum and the Fine Arts Work Center. He has always drawn and has painted landscapes in watercolor while working as an architect and city planner. It was moving to Provincetown and becoming part of the arts colony that caused Kelly to shift mediums from water-based paint to oil. He has also become influenced by the artists of Provincetown, past and present and his work has evolved as a result.

Kelly’s practice begins in Sketchbooks – loose, animated pencil and ink drawings that he brings into the studio as reference and inspiration for formal oil on canvas paintings. 

Kelly did a series of works on the old Herring Cove Bath House before the structure was demolished in 2012. That work let to the “Above It” series in 2014 and 2015. Now, with the “Town Pier” series, the boundaries and forms of his townscapes are pushed and pulled with flat and textured planes of color, buildings tumbling down on each other in his dense, compacted coastal town at Land’s End. Hopper, Thibaud, Diebenkorn, and Nicholas De Stael are significant influences for Paul’s current work.

Contributing to his community is important to Kelly. He currently serves on the Advisory Board and Building Committee for the Fine Arts Work Center, and the Town of Provincetown Building Committee.