“William Kelley is an artist of remarkable expressive powers. He possesses a guileless authenticity and deeply felt power to portray his personal passions in paint. He connects directly with his enthusiasms and thus his joy is manifest in the work. As an expatriate American painting in Tuscany, he brings a New world honesty and sincerity to the immemorial splendors-the light and color swarming landscapes of Italy: land of dreams and visions of delight.”
David Cleveland
ArtNews and Author
"Wonderful Work: ...as profound a vision as one could want
How Cézanne would love you... Magnificent"
Sister Wendy Beckett
Art Historian, Author, and Host on PBS and BBC
“Kelley’s devotion to Italy reaps rich rewards: the casual seriousness of it all creates a world that, if not a waking dream, surely suggests an alternative universe.”
Gerrit Henry
ArtNews, Art in America
“Warm, rich pictures…it’s the space - the distances in the these glowing images that give them their spiritual power.”
Sister Wendy Beckett
Art Historian, Author, and Host on PBS and BBC
“The work, so rich, glowing, cheery, subtle, its colours and patterns so measured in their rhythm, its impact of serious joy so deep.”
Sister Wendy Beckett
Art Historian, Author, and Host on PBS and BBC
“This is an extraordinary painting ... simply magnificent!"
Sister Wendy Beckett
Art Historian, Author, and Host on PBS and BBC
“A true landscape painting does not tell us precisely what a landscape looks like-or, not only that, what it tells us, if this does not sound extravagant, is what a landscape means, what is its individual power and beauty. The painter sees what is before him, takes it into himself, understands and loves it, and then re-creates for us the double reality of what he sees and what he feels.
Cezanne, to whom William is a spiritual son, called it his “petit sensation”, his reaction, the response he and he alone could make.
Kelley loves the Chianti region…This is no way is a religious picture, but a profoundly spiritual one, a strong and gentle praise of the soil and its fruit."
Sister Wendy Beckett
Art Historian, Author, and Host on PBS and BBC