Kelli Vance
Shadow in the Mirror, 2024
oil on linen
60h x 72w in
KV066
Kelli Vance
A Certain Encounter, 2024
oil on linen
36h x 48w in
KV065
Kelli Vance
Double-Edged Daydreams, 2024
oil on linen
60h x 48w in
KV067
Kelli Vance
Heartbreaker, 2024
oil on linen
48h x 36w in
KV068
Kelli Vance
That Time I Dissolved, 2024
oil on canvas
72h x 96w in
KV071
Kelli Vance
Self Sabotage, 2024
oil on linen
30h x 40w in
KV069
Kelli Vance
Sitting with the Mystic, 2024
oil on linen
50h x 40w in
KV070
Kelli Vance
Waiting/ Wanting, 2022
oil on linen
30h x 40w in
KV060
Kelli Vance
This Lump in My Throat is You, 2023
oil on canvas
40h x 30w in
KV062
Kelli Vance
Maneater, 2022
oil on canvas
40h x 30w in
KV059
Kelli Vance
The Gut Wrenching Beauty Of It All, 2022
oil on canvas
42h x 71w in
KV052
Kelli Vance
That Melancholy Residue of Desire, 2021
oil on canvas
60h x 40w in
KV050
Kelli Vance
Close to the Bone, 2022
oil on linen
48h x 36w in
KV058
Kelli Vance
It Could Have Been Different, 2022
oil on canvas
42h x 72w in
KV056
Kelli Vance
How Inseparably I was Bound, 2015
oil on canvas
36h x 96w in
KV042
Kelli Vance
The Days Turned Into Weeks, 2021
oil on canvas
36h x 48w in
KV038
Kelli Vance
To Match My Nature With Nature, 2019
oil on linen
27h x 52w in
KV036
Kelli Vance
Under A Blistering Sky I May Find Myself, 2019
oil on canvas
42h x 72w in
KV037
Kelli Vance
As If I Have The Answers, 2018
oil on canvas
36h x 48w in
KV025
Kelli Vance
My Thoughts Came Like Balloons Floating Over The Desert, 2019
oil on canvas
46h x 74w in
KV035
Kelli Vance
Her Glowing White Flesh With Green Blue Eyes, 2019
oil on linen
34h x 68w in
KV028
Kelli Vance
We Provide Our Best Offering To The Universe, 2017
oil on canvas
60h x 36w in
KV012
Kelli Vance
In The Cold Night of The Day, 2019
oil on canvas
36h x 60w in
KV030
Kelli Vance b. 1983 - Working from staged photographs, Kelli Vance’s paintings borderline on cinematic. Vance’s luxurious and masterly paintings have often presented women in states of anomie or conflict—personal, social, physical. This is the feminine in a quietly hostile environment of her own making, or trapped in a set of expectations that she either works with, to maintain equilibrium, or against, with mixed results—sometimes defeated, sometimes defiant. Vance’s women are in a kind of unseen, unstoppable trouble, or they are recalling it, or are bracing for it. They are often in their final minutes of innocence before the sinister shadow overtakes the narrative.
As viewers, we shift back and forth between states of admiration of the subjects’ elegance and seductiveness—these women are in control, at the ready, waiting for the arrival of something sublime, or pedestrian, or terrifying—and apprehension concerning their imminent fates. Is the danger roiling up from within, or descending from without? This is gorgeous and unsettling work.
Kelli Vance graduated from the University of Houston with her MFA in 2008. Her work was recently acquired by Houston Airports in 2021 and is in the permanent collection of the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art. Roswell, New Mexico. In 2017, Vance received an Individual Artist Grant from Houston Arts Alliance and the City of Houston. She was included in the 2009 Texas Biennial and in 2014 was a finalist for the Hunting Art Prize. Vance’s work has shown across Texas as well as in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New Mexico.
Kelli Vance | We Don't Sleep
May 21 - June 25, 2022
Kelli Vance | We Don't Sleep
May 21 - June 25, 2022
Kelli Vance | We Don't Sleep
May 21 - June 25, 2022
Kelli Vance | We Don't Sleep
May 21 - June 25, 2022
Kelli Vance | We Don't Sleep
May 21 - June 25, 2022
Kelli Vance | We Don't Sleep
May 21 - June 25, 2022
Kelli Vance: Performance Anxiety
January 4 - February 8, 2020
Kelli Vance: Performance Anxiety
January 4 - February 8, 2020
Kelli Vance: Performance Anxiety
January 4 - February 8, 2020
Kelli Vance: Performance Anxiety
January 4 - February 8, 2020
Kelli Vance: Sappers and Miners
May 13 – June 17, 2017
Kelli Vance: Sappers and Miners
May 13 – June 17, 2017
Kelli Vance: Sappers and Miners
May 13 – June 17, 2017
Kelli Vance: Sappers and Miners
May 13 – June 17, 2017
Kelli Vance: Sappers and Miners
May 13 – June 17, 2017
Kelli Vance: We Don’t Sleep at Cris Worley Fine Arts, May 11 – June 15, 2024
Kelli Vance’s exhibition Don’t Abandon Me offered a captivating and unsettling exploration of female figures in intimate settings. Vance’s deceptively realistic and wash-like painting style captures close-up, anonymized figures with a striking lack of detail, even in elements like their hair. The highlights in their jewelry — pearls and other baubles — catch the eye, revealing slight peaks that lift from the painting’s surface.
The figures, often topless but usually adorned with lace and jewels, tumble over one another in boudoirs and bathrooms. These women obsess over one another in scenes imbued with a sense of quiet tension and underlying anxiety.
Vance’s paintings, described in the press release as taking “Lynchian dread a step further,” evoke the eerie atmospheres of films like Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive. The women’s faces are obscured, reflecting a sense of deprivation of self, while their circumstances are rendered with sharp focus. The narratives within these paintings are rich with decadent detail and photographic refinement, yet the works vibrate with an ineffable anxiety.
The exhibition oscillates between admiration for the subjects’ elegance and seductiveness and a deep apprehension about their fates. Vance’s women appear in control and poised, waiting for something sublime, pedestrian, or terrifying to arrive. This tension between beauty and dread creates a powerful and layered viewing experience.
Don’t Abandon Me was a masterful display of Vance’s ability to merge high glamor with a pervasive sense of unease. The result is a series of paintings that are as gorgeous as they are unsettling, inviting viewers to navigate the fine line between admiration and apprehension.
