Kelly McKernan is a professional fine artist and freelance illustrator based in Nashville, Tennessee. She is best known for her watercolor paintings within the Imaginative Realism movement, making use of surreal imagery, graphic elements, and female subjects. Kelly's work frequents galleries such as Gallery 1988, Arch Enemy Arts, Haven Gallery, Modern Eden Gallery, and Spoke Art. Kelly is also an instructor with The Fantastic Workshop, a sponsored artist with Grumbacher, and a member of the internationally recognized PRISMA Artist Collective.
Based in Nashville, Tennessee, Kelly McKernan is an independent artist in the United States. They received their B.F.A. from Kennesaw State University in Georgia in 2009, and since 2012, they have been a full-time artist. Original paintings in watercolor and acryla gouache are produced for exhibitions, individual commissions, and their web shop, which also sells fine art prints and other goods. Kelly not only has a sizable social media following, but she also tours the US for events and comic-cons, conducts seminars, gives tutorials, and illustrates books, comics, games, and more. Kelly is an illustration professor at Nashville, Tennessee’s Nossi College of Art as of 2023.
Kelly’s path as an artist and a person largely influences their personal work. Through the lens of the sexuality and gender spectrums, motherhood, childhood trauma, leaving a religious cult, pregnancy loss and abortion, depression, divorce, neurodivergence, and chronic disease, their art depicts the artist’s personal growth of an ever-shifting identity. All of this is interwoven with Kelly’s subdued story of introspection, which is revealed in her vivid and dreamlike paintings.
2023
McKernan, Sarah Andersen, and Karla Ortiz sued Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt on January 13, 2023, alleging that the companies’ use of generative artificial intelligence tools violated millions of artists’ rights by training on five billion images that were scraped from the internet without the original artists’ permission. Judge William Orrick III said on July 19 that he will dismiss the majority of the case and asked that the parties clarify their positions and “provide more facts”.
If you’re looking to grab any of my wares or art prints in time for the holidays, please don’t wait much longer! I’ll be spending the next few days getting everything fulfilled and out the door. Thanks for supporting a human artist!https://t.co/og6X6h3ZXepic.twitter.com/j0sVJlndeQ
A new post for my substack is all about “Fester,” one of my more personal and intimate paintings that was unethically scraped for training AI image generators. It was painted in watercolor in 2013. Ten years later, I share its significance.
1/ Absolutely a must read to see what disgusting lengths people will go to excuse making $$$ on tech world’s latest hype cycle. Another brilliant report by @404mediaco on why CivitAi is one of the worst platforms online.
