About the Artist
Marie Antoinette Kelley
My art career got off to an unusual start. I always thought I wanted to be a doctor. I was enrolled in pre-med and in my final year won the national Goldwater Scholarship for science. This scholarship was about to map out the next six years of my life and set me on a career in medicine. Right about then, I realized that's not where I wanted to go with my life. So I changed course and devoted myself full-time to my family and two little girls until I knew my next step.
Fast-forward a few years, my friend was moving away and passed along to me a video course called "Yes, You Can Draw!" It was like a light turned on. I didn’t even watch the video. Instead, I picked up a pencil and started to draw. Once I drew my first few portraits, I knew I had found what I was looking for—a passion inside of me that I could share with the world.
I’ve done hundreds of portraits since then and still find that I love creating them as much as ever. No two faces are the same--each with its own unique light, mostly radiating from the eyes. I work to capture that in my portraits. That's how I show the beauty of each soul.
I've also noticed that my heart often wakes up to the person I am drawing and I feel them influencing how I create the portrait. I've had some amazing experiences while creating portraits--experiences that were then confirmed when I relayed them back to the subject, or their loved ones. A few of these experiences are mentioned in the section Postcards from Heaven.
These very “right brain” moments have deepened my already reflective bend towards life and love, and tied my artwork to my passion for soulful living.
I hope my Portraits of the Soul speak to your heart, as they do to mine. Enjoy looking around my collection!
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