Kelly Reemtsen

Work

Kelly Reemtsen is best known for her paintings of elaborately dressed women carrying household tools such as chainsaws or axes. Though they can be interpreted as variably sweet or menacing, the paintings investigate the role of the modern woman. Reemtsen's paintings are characterized by their thick impasto, stark white backgrounds and anonymous figures. Reemtsen's most recent body of work explores the idea of breaking the metaphorical glass ceiling, often featuring female figures climbing on objects like chairs or ladders.

Reemtsen has depicted similar subject matter in series of prints, including woodcuts, etchings and screenprints. She has studied printmaking since the 1990s, most recently as an artist in residence at the Venice Printmaking studio in Venice, Italy. In the past, she also studied etchings with Peter Petengill at Wingate Studio in New Hampshire, and screen printing with Tony Clough at Serio Press in Los Angeles. In September 2016, Reemtsen will participate in the visiting artist printmaking program at the University of Central Florida's Flying Horse Editions studio.

She has also worked in sculpture, creating a series of resin pills, which she views as an accessory much like the jewelry or tools that populate her paintings, as well as a 2015 series of monumental cast stainless steel lipsticks, entitled Fuck the System.

Kelly Reemtsen’s work has been exhibited widely in the United States, and is part of the Twentieth Century Fox and AT&T corporate collections.

Publishing

Kelly Reemtsen published her first monograph, “I'm Falling,“ in 2013. The book won the Independent Spirit Award at the 2014 Outstanding Book of the Year Awards, hosted by Independent Publisher.

In 2015, she was one of fifteen artists selected for inclusion in the book "Cool Paintings" by Carolina Amell.