Bio
Kelly A. Rose
Education
2007-2010 Goldsmiths University of London, BA (Hons) Fine Art (Art Practice)
2006 -2007 Foundation Diploma Fine Art, Hackney College, London
2003-2005 Princes Drawing School (Royal Drawing School) Printmaking (etching) Life Drawing
Guided by Nietzsche’s tenet that life is justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon, my practice is an alchemical act. I transform lived adversity into an investigation of existence, using the canvas as a threshold where sensation, memory, and fracture are distilled. Here, the raw material of a complex history is sublimated into a meditation on resilience, perception, meaning and overcoming.
The work navigates a necessary tension between abstraction and figuration, mirroring the struggle to find coherence within entropy. Archetypes and fragmented vignettes emerge not as illustrations, but as residues of a lived inquiry into the mythic and the metaphysical. A scent can transpose into a visual signature; a legacy of instability becomes a study in underlying tension.
My practice is grounded in a direct, inherited understanding of life’s fragility and endurance. It is a philosophical response shaped by formative experiences outside conventional narratives—a compelled questioning of all structures, which now fuels a relentless search for the patterns and forces that shape a life. My work does not depict this history; it is the logical, aesthetic output of a mind forged within it, offering a unique lens on the perpetual human struggle to impose order and find transcendence.