Today we’d like to introduce you to Ryan McKellar.
Hi Ryan, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
As a child, I was always sketching anything of interest. As a teenager, I signed up for all of the limited art classes that were offered at my school and learned more about different techniques and composition. I started entering scholastic competitions, helping with set design for my high school drama program, and making caricatures of friends and favorite teachers.. However, through those years I had no interest in painting–I just thought of paint as messy and imprecise compared to the pencil and ink techniques that I knew. Eventually, I stopped drawing.
In college, I took a few elective summer courses that touched on contour sketching and watercolors, but I never regained the same level of interest and enthusiasm.
Several years after college, I left a local travel marketing job and found myself wanting to broaden my work experience. I spent a couple of years as a temp employee for Duke University while teaching myself web design. One of my longest assignments there was for the university’s art museum, which was beginning its relocation from a small facility to its current location. I got to experience art again daily, meet local art enthusiasts, work with the docents, and learn about the museum’s growing collections. I grew especially fond of 20th century contemporary work and decided to begin collecting work and teaching myself how to use acrylic paints.
After years and a collection of canvases spent from failed experimentation, I was invited to display my work at a Raleigh furniture store, where I eventually sold several pieces before a manager encouraged me to seek a local art gallery presence. A Chapel Hill gallery that specialized in 20th century modern art and rare animation pieces eventually took several works consignment and eventually sold them. Solo and group show opportunities emerged throughout Raleigh and Durham, and that’s when I fully realized that I was doing something that people actually liked.
From 2014 until 2020 I paused because I felt that my work had stopped evolving and I was getting juried into fewer and fewer local events. There were also some personal distractions during that time–ill family members, an opportunity to work on designing a new live-work space, and the pandemic. I just no longer had the bandwidth and wasn’t in a proper head space to create anything of quality.
My home studio became a reality in late 2021, and I was able to find enough creative inspiration in the previous years’ transitions and challenges to resume painting. Unfortunately my downtime had led to my name fading in the evolving local art community, so I’m now working to reestablish myself as a visual artist. And that process continues.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The road for me was initially slow but smooth, and when I was starting to become more established the building momentum was largely luck and chance. Then came my pause for several years–personally it was necessary, but professionally it was a huge setback. I’m still sort of in a recovery from that extended absence from the local art community.
We’ve been impressed with Ryan McKellar Fine Art, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
I don’t often think of my artwork as a business. This is probably because it’s something that I do in the evenings or on weekends. I have a corporate “day job” that’s my primary source of income. Very few artists have been able to make a living through their art in this area, so I’ve never really had an expectation to become a full-time visual artist. But I wouldn’t exactly turn down an opportunity to pursue art as a full-time endeavor.
My artist statement is probably the best explanation of my work and what makes it unique:
Inspired by his own art collection and conversations with other artists and collectors, Durham artist Ryan McKellar has been creating since 2009 after years of developing two distinct styles of painting: a stark, hard-edge minimalist style incorporating saturated color fields and heavily textured media, and a second body of more spontaneous abstracted forms.
While these styles appear to be completely unrelated, they both explore the interplay of color, weight, and movement within compositions at their rawest state.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Aside from networking and self promotion within the artist community (I’m admittedly not the best at both of these), I feel the key to being successful s to actively evolve as an artist. Learning different techniques, constantly figuring out ways to improve and refine existing ones, experimenting with media–this is how I first established myself and how I’m working to rebuild after several years of not making art.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ryanmckellar.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mckellarfineart/
- Facebook: http://facebook.com/mckellarfineart/
