The Times - Friday, September 27, 2002

Fine Arts - Local artist's sparse yet complex art with a story

by Janet Purcell

Trenton-born artist Thomas Kelly refers to himself as "a blue-collar painter, a hard worker, a serious painter from Trenton."

He is all those things and more. He's a professional by anyone's standards, an insightful chronicler of human emotions - and a likable hometown guy.

Kelly grew up in Mercerville, graduated from Steinert High School, studied tool and dye-making at Mercer County Vo-Tech and achieved an associate's degree in fine arts from Mercer County Community College.

A large collection of his paintings is on display at the Trenton City Museum as part of a three-person show that also includes the constructions of Jack Knight and vibrant paintings by Isabella Natale.

Kelly depicts scenes and occurrences that are common to all of us, but he presents them with a simplicity and spareness that pares away the extraneous and explores the core emotions of the people portrayed.

There is a mysterious quality about his work. Questions are asked and answers are never explicitly spelled out.

"I don't explain my paintings becuase that ruins it for people. They come to their own conclusions and there's never a 'wrong' conclusion," he says.

Kelly says when people ask him if their interpretation of a painting is correct, he simply tells them the painting stands on its own. "I don't tell them their stories often rival my own."

A painting such as his "Refuses to Merge," which shows a man trying to wedge himself between a couple on a crowded city street, stirs up all kinds of questions. Why doesn't he just pass to the side? Why is the woman clutching her purse and is her partner about to reach for something inside his jacket? Is there some meaning attached to the fact that the hands of everyone are overly large and prominent?

Kelly uses a predominately blue-green palette for this painting, which creates an ominous mood, and yet he protrays the intruder in a jacket, dress shirt and tie rather than the garb of a street thug.

Becuase Kelly offers no explanation either in the painting itself or in the title, the viewer is left to create his or her own narrative - and that's exactly what he wants to have happen.

A less disturbing scene is portrayed in "Helping With The Dress," an occurrence familiar to most couples. A man in black pants and undershirt is seen assisting a woman with the zipper in the back of her blue dress. It's a common scene, but still there is that Kelly aura of mystery about it. The only things in the room are the couple and a wooden bed that is neither plush nor welcoming. The floor, ceiling and walls are completely bare of adornment, yet there is not a look of poverty. Does this sparsity, then, speak of a barren relationship between the man and woman? Or is it saying where there is tenderness and love there is no need for embellishment?

Frank Rivera, who was the first art teacher Kelly had when he began to study at Mercer County Community College, calls Kelly "a painter of expectancy" and that feels exactly right. There is always a feeling that something is about to happen.

"Frank has seen my work from the beginning and has good insight into it," Kelly says. "He once told me, 'Just keep doing what you're doing,' and that was validating,"

Kelly finds his ideas as he lives his everyday life. He carries a small notebook with him and when he sees or hears something that strikes him, he makes note of it. "Sometimes it's a one-line sentence like, 'Dogs in a yard' and sometimes it's a very simple line drawing, just enough to get me to the canvas," he says.

He makes a small sketch of his idea and then blows that up on a copier to 8 1/2-by-11 inches. That is then transferred to his canvas using a traditional grid method. "If I get stuck, I refer back to the first tiny sketch because that's the gesture that caught me in the first place," he says. "And as rough as the drawing is, when I compare it to a photo of the finished painting, they are very close."

When asked what artists inspire him, he mentions the German expressionists, the mannerists, Balthus and Alice Neal, whose protraits he labels as "fantastic."

"But I'm not as tortured as some of those people were," he says. "Someone once told me to be an artist you need to have the hide of a rhinoceros, the tenacity of a bulldog and a warm place to go home to."

The tenacity is there. Sometimes, he says, the hide is a bit thinner than he would like, but he does have that warm place to go home to. And one of those warm places he refers to is the Mercer County Community College art department.

"I was going to Mercer County for business and it was that first drawing class with Frank Rivera that got me hooked. Then Terri McNichol got me connected to watercolors and the washy acrylics with layer to layer. Everyone at Mercer is very helpful and nurturing.

"And I'm still fascinated," he says. "You start with a blank sheet or canvas and you end up with something interesting. It's like magic to me."

Kelly's been painting 10 years now and, along with several awards, his paintings are included in collections such as Trenton City Museum, Mercer County Community College and the new Lafayette Yard Marriott Hotel Conference Center.