The Water’s Song. Kelcey Loomer, artist
By Gina Malone
Like most area artists, Kelcey Loomer has been through a lot in the last few years, particularly after Hurricane Helene tore through the area. In 2024, she was working at an immersive, post-graduate online program, London’s Royal Drawing School Online Drawing Development Year. In late September, she had five weeks remaining in the program, and trying to continue without internet service was a struggle.
Summer Morning. Kelcey Loomer, artist
“For a while, I spent my days hopping around to anywhere I could find an internet connection,” Kelcey says. “Twice a week my classes started at 5 a.m., so there was one early morning I set up a tiny studio in the Copper Crown restaurant parking lot so I could use their internet. I tucked into the back of my Honda Fit with candles for light and a hot water bottle and winter hat to keep warm while I attended class. Another time I set up outside at Whole Foods on a windy day, and all my supplies kept blowing away. Another time I tried to set up at the Red Cross, and across the table someone was hunched over crying. I closed my computer and went and asked if I could give this stranger a hug. It was such a tender moment that I am glad I stopped for. In the end, a local couple who have collected my work kindly offered their carriage house for me to work in, and that was a huge relief. I am so grateful to them for their generosity and helping me end my program on a positive note.”
Kelcey grew up in rural New Hampshire among a family of artists. She now considers the fact that the household did not have a television set a gift to her development of creativity and imagination. She spent those childhood years making two- and three-dimensional art, being part of a summer theater group, reading books and building small worlds with her sister and friends for their toys. “And I spent a lot of time in this one mossy spot in the forest behind my house just watching the world around me,” she says.
A Love Returned in Full. Kelcey Loomer, artit
She discovered Western North Carolina when she attended Warren Wilson College where she earned a degree in integrated studies with a focus on “sense of place.” It’s a concept, she says, that informs her artwork today.
A full-time artist since 2010, she creates both fine art and jewelry (with her business Seed and Sky). “Although oil painting and printmaking are my primary modes of working, my art practice is intentionally not bound to a single material, subject or way of working,” she says. “Having the freedom and ability to be curious and to work with the materials and ideas that are calling to me is very important to me. I do often work around a particular idea, but, ultimately, I paint what moves me.”
To that end, she employs mediums intuitively. “I jump between materials and textures, experimenting with where they can meet and what happens when they do,” Kelcey says. “I love the way ink and watercolor can bloom and yet also be controlled. I love the quickness and immediacy of acrylic and acrylic mediums. I love the depth and silkiness of oil paint. I love the sound of ink on a brayer.”
Goodnight Hawk. Kelcey Loomer, artist
Her early upbringing, with space for imagination and being in nature, continues to inspire what goes onto the canvas. “I’m interested in the space where the observed world and the inner world meet,” she says. “I like to weave what is around me together with memory, imagination and feeling, showing both what I see and what I dream. The natural world has always been an important part of this for me. I pay attention to the colors, shapes, plants, landscapes and small things I encounter, but I’m also interested in what they stir up inside me: memory, feeling, imagination and a sense of place.”
Having a studio again brings her joy and inspiration. “I opened a gallery/working studio (Ochre Rose Gallery) with fellow painters Amanda McLenon and Elizabeth Porritt Carrington,” she says, “and while we hoped our work would complement one another, it’s been such a delight to see how naturally it does. It’s a gorgeous space too. For a painter, the light is so dreamy.”
Before Helene hit, Kelcey was scheduled to have a solo exhibition at Tyger Tyger Gallery, in Asheville. Owner of the former gallery Mira Gerard likes the descriptiveness of Kelcey’s paintings and the way they incorporate intimacy and tenderness. “My focus was on some of her work that has a more narrative quality,” Mira says, “including large interiors that had elements like herself and her partner, cats and cozy spaces—including ‘art inside the art’ such as beautiful quilts. There’s this glowing light quality within her work that sits outside of a traditional realist painting.”
Grandmother’s Jade Plant. Kelcey Loomer, artist
Kelcey hopes that her paintings are dynamic enough to reveal themselves in new ways to viewers at different times in their lives. “It means a lot to me when others find their own stories and connections within my art,” she says. “I can put all of myself into making a painting, and yet it can hold many stories of its own. Once I hang a painting in the gallery, it begins to have a life beyond me. I love that different people can see different things in the same painting and find their own connections to it. Ultimately, my goal is to make work that you can be in conversation with for a lifetime.”
Find Kelcey Loomer’s work at Ochre Rose Gallery in Cotton Mill Studios, 122 Riverside Drive, in Asheville’s River Arts District, open daily from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and by appointment. Learn more at KelceyLoomer.com and SeedAndSky.com, and on Facebook (Kelcey Loomer Art) and Instagram @kelceyloomer. On Saturday, December 12, Cotton Mill Studios will host the Light the Night lantern auction with handmade lanterns created by local artists that attendees can bid on and then carry in the Lantern Walk on Saturday, December 19.
