(Photo above: Sky Beings by Randal Leigh)
Art in the Atrium, Franklin Crossing is featuring noted Bend artists Michael P. Kelly and Randal Fyfe Leigh.
Michael P. Kelly (Mike Kelly) exhibits abstract art in acrylic as well as realistic, detailed ink drawings of Central Oregon flora. This diversity both of medium and imagery reveals his extensive artistic ability and life experience.
Kelly, Massachusetts’ native, studied at the Art Institute of Boston, learning formal skills in illustration and drawing; he then, in 1973, completed a BFA in painting at the San Francisco Art Institute. The artist notes his good fortune in instruction by noted painters Philip Burnham Hicken in Boston as well as David Hannah, Julius Hatofsky and Sam Tchakalian in San Francisco. These studies informed his skill in both realism and abstraction.
With a BFA, he returned to Boston to paint until his move to New Mexico, living and teaching in native Navajo areas. These vast spaces, punctuated by odd geologic formations of mesas and buttes, and the intense sunsets of gold, red, lavender and azure blue, further affected his continued painting.
A subsequent move to Oregon and work as a cartographer on the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs reservation also influenced his painting. He comments that a cartographic grid is often present as exemplified in his large acrylic, New Mexico Seen.
Private and corporate collections feature Kelly’s art which also appeared in Boston, San Francisco, Albuquerque, Bend and Madras exhibitions. His creed underscores his success, “Every day, I paint something….I love paint and painting is like breathing to me….no breath, no life.”
Randal Fyfe Leigh (Randal Leigh), a Bend artist versatile in many mediums, devotes his considerable talent to his own art and commissioned works. In the current suite on display, he acknowledges the “ancient art of distant millennia” and his reverence for those artists whose creations date back to the dawn of artistic expression.
Leigh’s Petroglyph Homage pays tribute to the primordial design of bulls, shamans, early Native American imagery and others of unknown origin. Carving on delicate, three dimensional, sealed acrylic surfaces, he painstakingly creates subtle yet striking and colorful images, reminiscent of and offering respect to the original artists.
Formerly of Los Angeles, California one of Leigh’s many achievements includes two Emmy Awards for Artistic Contribution to KCET, received during KCET’s time as Southern California’s flagship PBS member station.
In his LA career from the late 1960’s to 2015, he envisioned and created numerous backdrops, paintings, sets and props, for live audiences and film productions including Star Trek, Seabiscuit, Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, Les Miserables, The Carol Burnett and The Sony and Cher Shows, to name a few. He also served as senior artist at NBC/Universal with the Jay Leno, Tonight Show.
The artist’s career also includes working at Disney Imagineering, sculpting and painting 3D sets for the Disneyland rides Pirates of the Caribbean and Temple of Doom, for Disneyland Anaheim and Orlando, Disneyland Resort Paris and Tokyo Disney Resort. Throughout this period, he also successfully created and sold his own artwork internationally to private and corporate collectors.
Billye Turner, art consultant, organizes art events for Franklin Crossing with info at 503-780-2828 and billyeturner@bendnet.com.