The love of color, history, faith and the need-to-know God and his beautiful creation has charted Eileen Kelly’s artistic journey, which spans eight decades. Starting in childhood, she was attracted to art, and she grew this attraction into a lifelong love during her college years and beyond, she reflects.
“I enjoy my classical style in oils, watercolors and pastels,” she says.
Her artistic journey became really focused when she became a wife and mother, as she realized that she could use her artistic talents to illustrate God’s beauty of family.
The Beauty of Family
“I was married to a wonderful man for 70 years and we were fortunate to have the resources to travel all over the world,” she remarks. “My marriage was a cornerstone of my focus in building a strong, unified domestic church for myself and expressing its importance.”
are displayed in her home.
During her travels throughout the world with her family, she was inspired by the various religious paintings she witnessed, and it was her family that encouraged her to further her artistic interests. With the encouragement, she decided to use her developing talents as a platform to promote the importance of family unity. That is, to use oil paintings and religious art to articulate the beauty of family and the importance of its unity in an effort to foster the broader faith community.
“God led me to oil paintings, and through my love of faith and family, I work to spread this love,” Eileen says.
Holy Family’s Influence
“I traveled to Lourdes and an array of other Marianist worship sites. I am inspired by Mary and her role in the Holy Family,” she reflects. Mary has an inspirational beauty as the Mother of God and it was so wonderful to experience the devotion to her at Lourdes, she adds: “Mary is a model for me as a wife and mother.”
Eileen built on this inspiration and initially adopted iconography as a channel to further articulate the beauty and importance of family. Using her monetary resources, Eileen and her husband hosted an iconographer from New York.
“It was such an inspiring experience because the instructor masterfully brought God to all of us. It continued to inspire my faith journey.”
“The instructor highlighted that iconography allows artists to ‘write’ the icon while using minerals from the earth,” she reflects. “This is truly the purest essence of knowing and illustrating God because the artist uses materials created by God to articulate the beauty of God and his divine world,” she continues.
Eileen’s faith and family-oriented focus advanced through association with a charismatic group that encouraged intercessory prayers to the Holy Spirit for the unity of family life.
“I learned that God is in charge and that we must let God be God,” she attests. “There is such beauty in God’s design of family life and religious art manifests that beauty.”
well; in this photo, she is performing
a song she composed about her life.
Holy Spirit Guides
Her involvement in the charismatic group opened the door for the Holy Spirit to fully enter her life, and with the focus on the domestic church rooted in the vision of the group, the Holy Family became a primary focus for me, she adds.
“The Holy Family is an excellent model of family life and God designed it this way. Humanity ought to be encouraged by the parental sacrifices of Joseph and Mary and the love they rendered to the Son of God,” she says.
Using the Holy Family as her model, she continued to advance her oil paintings to portray the nurturing love that Mary fostered for Jesus. The nurturing love is truly a divine articulation of God’s love for his creation and art speaks this love in the most authentic format.
Expressing the nurturing love in her art, Eileen was influenced to bring God to others in a deeper manner. “I began taking the Holy Eucharist to the hospitalized faithful and did so for 20 years,” she states. “I would visit the sick and dying.”
All of the nurturing acts of love she expressed and witnessed in her art and by viewing other such religious art moved her to carry these sentiments out to help in bringing the presence of God to others.
Eileen’s life story is one rooted in love of her faith and family, and her oil paintings articulate this love in the most authentic format. Art enables her to bring God to others; in doing so, she highlights the God designed nurturing beauty of family.
In her closing reflections, she adds: “I am grateful for all the wonderful experiences in my life and much of the experiences are intertwined with faith, family and art. All three build from each other and offer enriching experiences filled with wonderful memories.
“God has a plan for everyone. We need to believe in God’s plan and stay focused on him.”
-Michael Dern
Faith Magazine Correspondent
