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Jo Ridge Kelley was featured as the cover artist for the October 2009 issue of The Laurel Of Asheville

While growing up with her four siblings on a dairy farm near Asheboro, halfway between Raleigh and Charlotte, Jo Ridge Kelley’s childhood was mostly about chores. When the last of the work was done, however, she’d slip out to the front yard with her sketch book and record images of her house, the barn, the pasture, the huge shade trees.

While in high school, she found every excuse she could to practice her art. “I painted backdrops for plays, worked on the bulletin boards, just about anything I could think of.” At age 14, she began taking private lessons in painting with oils.

“No one in my family had an art background,” says Jo. “We did have a lot of teachers in the family, and I love children. So I always thought I’d be a kindergarten teacher.”
She started on that path at UNC Charlotte. But even there, she took as many art courses as her schedule would allow. “One of my professors asked if I’d ever thought about changing my major from education to art,” says Jo. That was all the impetus she needed. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in creative arts and a certification in art education.

Two years into a new career as a high school arts instructor in Charlotte, she met Ed Kelley whom she eventually married. “Ed was from Waynesville, says Jo, “and so six months after we were married, we moved back there to be closer to nature.”
Jo’s life is all about transition. Once in Waynesville, she taught art in high school for two more years and then began offering private lessons in oil painting. She and her husband, also an artist and photographer, began a screen printing business which they ran for the next 18 years. “We created the art and then printed it on just about every surface you can think of.”

In 1997, Jo joined the Blue Ridge Watermedia Society and began spending more and more time at her easel. Meanwhile, Ridge Runner Naturals, the couple’s store, began selling all kinds of nature-related products. Over time, the business evolved into strictly an art gallery. “My husband and I aren’t businesspeople,” she jokes. “We were born artists, and so this was the right move for us.” More recently, their daughter Keri Anna (a talented jewelry designer) joined them to manage the gallery which sells only art and jewelry they create.

Jo’s art is also about transition. Much of her earlier works were based in realism, but now she’s creating larger, more abstract paintings, some as large as five by six feet.

“I am a very spiritual person,” explains Jo, “and painting is my way of sharing how I feel about our Creator and the amazing beauty we have been given to enjoy. It is my hope that my paintings will bring some of my daily joy into spaces where people can feel what I experience when I am painting the scene.”

In explaining her move to more abstract art, she says, “I think my painting has evolved into this more expressive, colorful work because I am painting more from my heart. The more abstract images actually have deeper personal meaning than making a tree look like a tree. They are coming from me and my emotions in response to the natural world.”
She revels in the beauty of her natural surroundings and, whenever the weather permits, prefers to create en plein air where nature, too, is always in transition.

To see more of Jo’s work, stop by Ridge Runner Naturals Galley/Studio, 33 N. Main Street in Waynesville, or visit jokelley.com. Her paintings can also be seen at Seven Sisters Gallery in Black Mountain, and in Asheville at the Biltmore Estate and Mountain Made in the Grove Arcade.

This article appeared in the October 2009 issue of The Laurel of Asheville. Article Provided Courtesy of The Laurel of Asheville.