Kelly Seim Artist

Oil on canvas

40x30

36x36, oil on canvas

Inspired by a steamy summer adventure, driving through the heart of the Mississippi Delta, this painting portrays the spiritual, magical, and mythical heart of the Blues. The Blues were "born under a bad sign" on a plantation, perfected by a mystical encounter with the Devil at "the crossroads," and spread across the country by a flood and migration of Biblical proportions. Saturday nights spent dancing to the Blues, or "Devil's music," contrasted with Sunday mornings at church, singing in a choir. While gospel music uplifted and spoke to the faith and hope needed by ex-slaves, now sharecroppers, to persevere in the face of obstacles, Blues were a salve for and expression of broken hearts, suffering, and longing.

acrylic & gold leaf on canvas, 24x36

“I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wondering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty bats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them...”
― Annie Dillard

oil on canvas, 36x36

oil on canvas, 36x36

Sunday is the golden clasp that binds together the volume of the week. ―Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

oil on canvas, 48x48

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

These words are part of a poem written on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty, herself an immigrant woman, who stands watch over America's Eastern harbor. As the current political climate sparked new debate about who can and cannot enter the United States, I saw in my mind's eye the waves of previous generations of women washing ashore from every continent; their diversity, strength, and courage creating the bright and beautiful tapestry which is the foundation of this great country. Any American who is not First Nation has ancestors who were permitted passage through the "golden door" into this country. Who will we be and what will be lost if we close the door?

oil on canvas, 24x30

PRIVATE COLLECTION

I learned about the sacred art of self decoration with the monarch butterflies perched atop my head, lightning bugs as my night jewelry, and emerald-green frogs as bracelets.
― Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run with the Wolves

oil on canvas, 36x36

The unconscious mind is a repository, a "cauldron" (Freud) of primitive wishes and impulse kept at bay. It is dark earth, the ground underneath, full of angels and demons, creepy crawlies, things that bug and pester us through dreams and impulses that we often cannot bear to understand. 

oil on canvas, 36x36

PRIVATE COLLECTION

oil on canvas, 30x40

PRIVATE COLLECTION

oil on canvas 36x36

PRIVATE COLLECTION

Received Honorable Mention, Springville Museum of Art 2016

In mythology, irises symbolize the connection between Heaven and Earth. This painting is a meditation on how we know and arrive at spiritual truth. The paths are numerous and harmonizing: nature, revelation directly from the Divine, our own intuition and emotions, and stories and knowledge recorded by others both ancient and modern.

oil on board, 30x42

PRIVATE COLLECTION

Beauty, Bloom, & Bliss

The Three Graces, celebrated in classical literature and art, were the daughters of Jupiter (or Zeus in Greek mythology), and companions to the Muses. Thalia (youth and beauty) is accompanied by Euphrosyne (mirth), and Aglaia (elegance).

oil on canvas, 30x40

As with any descent to the unconscious, there comes a time when one simply hopes for the best, pinches one's nose, and jumps into the abyss. If this were not so, we would not have needed to create the words heroine, hero, or courage.”

― Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run with the Wolves

oil on canvas, 36x42

I rose from marsh mud
algae, equisetum, willows,
sweet green, noisy
birds and frogs.
― Lorine Niedecker

oil on canvas, 30x40

Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air--moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh--felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing. Honeysuckle, swamp flowers, magnolia, and the mystery smell of the river scented the atmosphere, amplifying the intrusion of organic sleaze. It was aphrodisiac and repressive, soft and violent at the same time. In New Orleans, in the French Quarter, miles from the barking lungs of alligators, the air maintained this quality of breath, although here it acquired a tinge of metallic halitosis, due to fumes expelled by tourist buses, trucks delivering Dixie beer, and, on Decatur Street, a mass-transit motor coach named Desire.
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

oil & gold leaf on canvas, 30x40

Who knows what may lie around the next corner? There may be a window somewhere ahead. It may look out on a field of sunflowers. -Joe Hill

oil on canvas, 30x40

A sister is both your mirror - and your opposite.

- Elizabeth Fishel

oil on canvas, 30x40

PRIVATE COLLECTION

Having a lover/friend who regards you as a living growing criatura, being, just as much as the tree from the ground, or a ficus in the house, or a rose garden out in the side yard... having a lover and friends who look at you as a true living breathing entity, one that is human but made of very fine and moist and magical things as well... a lover and friends who support the ciatura in you... these are the people you are looking for. They will be the friends of your soul for life. Mindful choosing of friends and lovers, not to mention teachers, is critical to remaining conscious, remaining intuitive, remaining in charge of the fiery light that sees and knows.” 
― Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run with the Wolves

oil on canvas, 30x40

Properly speaking, the unconscious is the real psychic; its inner nature is just as unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is just as imperfectly reported to us through the data of consciousness as is the external world through the indications of our sensory organs.
― Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams

oil & gold leaf on canvas, 24x36

Every habit he's ever had is still there in his body, lying dormant like flowers in the desert. Given the right conditions, all his old addictions would burst into full and luxuriant bloom.
― Margaret Atwood

oil on canvas, 30x40

oil on canvas, 30x40

The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.” 
― Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run with the Wolves

oil on canvas, 30x40

oil on canvas, 24x36

The psyches and souls of women also have their own cycles and seasons of doing and solitude, running and staying, being involved and being removed, questing and resting, creating and incubating, being of the world and returning to the soul-place.

-Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run with the Wolves

oil on canvas, 36x36

How does one know if she has forgiven? You tend to feel sorrow over the circumstance instead of rage, you tend to feel sorry for the person rather than angry with him. You tend to have nothing left to say about it at all.
― Clarissa Pinkola Estes

24x36, oil on canvas

Hello cowgirl in the sand
Is this place
at your command...
Hello ruby in the dust
Has your band
begun to rust...

- Neil Yoing

Saddled, oil on canvas, 34x36

oil on canvas, 48x36

“When a man is one of a kind, he will be lonely wherever he is.” 
― Louis L'Amour

24x36, oil on canvas

oil on canvas, 36x36

There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends. -Homer

oil on canvas, 36x48

PRIVATE COLLECTION

oil on canvas, 30x40

PRIVATE COLLECTION

oil on canvas, 48x60

PRIVATE COLLECTION

oil & gold leaf on canvas, 24x36

Read me a story,

and tuck me in tight,

say a sweet prayer,

and kiss me goodnight.

oil on canvas, 24x24

oil & gold leaf on canvas, 30x40

Oil and gold leaf on canvas

48x36

This painting is inspired by time in the South. The heavy air, nights spent drinking and dancing at jazz and blues bars, and everywhere the thick sweet blossoms and waxy leaves of magnolia trees. This painting was reworked from a simpler state: turquoise turned into navy, emerald green into sludge. The addition of gold leaf like lightning or branches catching Southern sunlight between the blossoms.

acrylic on canvas, 48x60

PRIVATE COLLECTION

oil on canvas, 30x40

PRIVATE COLLECTION

"I hope you go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you, and that you will work with these stories...water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom."

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

oil on canvas, 40x30

PRIVATE COLLECTION

Preservation Hall, NOLA

Acrylic on board, 8x10

"Most people would rather be sheep than stand on their own with antlers on."

- Tori Amos

Acrylic on board, 8x10

oil on canvas, 12x12

Acrylic on canvas, 12x12

acrylic on canvas, set of 4, 12x12 each

Wet 'n Wild, Mixtape, Acid Wash, Aquanet

acylic on board, 11x14