Mark Kelly

smoke painting

For the past year, my partner and I have been living in and renovating a pair of conjoined geodesic domes. At first- after an entire lifetime of living in square buildings- the geometry involved in the work was a bit confounding, but after a while it started making more sense and has now evolved into a source of continual inspiration. I constantly stare up at the ceilings, connecting line after line, forming combinations of hexagons and pentagons in a captivating, repetitive meditation. 

These drawings are from a series that have been inspired by inhabiting these fascinating structures, and are made entirely of smoke, which I then work back into with my fingers and a variety of dry brushes and erasers. The unpredictable nature of the smoke is seemingly in contrast to these very geometric structures, yet patterns will emerge randomly, just as there is a certain natural flow to the geometry of the buildings. The push-and-pill of that dichotomy is incredibly engaging to me.