Brendan Kelly

“Growing up in a typical suburban Australian home in the 70’s, my first experience with paint was working with my father on the house. I recall my father painting a green figure on the side of a box with paint oozing onto the ground. This moment sat in my mind for years and after some experimenting with art as a teenager with my siblings my creativity manifested through my work firstly at a surfboard factory, followed by my training as a Graphic Reproducer with a large printing company, which inspired my initial cartoon drawing and poster art. When the printing company turned digital, I gravitated to working on the land as a bricklayer and landscaper designing gardens and creating earthy garden structures along with building my own mud brick house.

After moving to Mullumbimby in the 90’s to live an alternative life on 12 acres of bush with my partner, the peace and isolation of living in the raw native bush created a sense of nostalgia and a yearning for more. It wasn’t until the early 2000’s when I got into stand-up comedy working on the Australian stage as ‘Brendan Lovechild’ and writing parodic children’s books that my confidence in the creative arts grew. Attending drawing classes, self-reflection and working with a neuro-linguistic programming therapist, my mind opened to a heightened sense of awareness and all I wanted to do was make art. Moving into T-shirt design and cartooning full-time led to my work being published in various Australian magazines and newspapers. The subsequent development of my art has evolved into a distinctive painting style which encapsulates elements of my character and life experiences, this includes my response to living in the bush in Northern New South Wales.”