Ambassador of the Week: Kelly Eddington

October 2, 2018

Meet Kelly Eddington, this week’s top American Watercolor Weekly Ambassador!

“Lucky Charms” (transparent watercolor, 18 x 24 in.)is part of my collection of shamrock pins arranged on aluminum foil. The various metallic surfaces, gems, and pearls made this painting incredibly challenging, and I enjoyed working with the various blues and oranges.

Kelly Eddington was born in west-central Illinois and received a B.A. in painting and drawing from Western Illinois University and an M.A. in art education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was an art teacher for seventeen years before deciding to pursue painting full-time in 2010. “I have never seen watercolors with the technical mastery Kelly Eddington commands. There is also so much heart and such an embrace of color,” said film critic Roger Ebert, one of Kelly’s earliest fans.

Kelly has a YouTube channel called Kelly Eddington Watercolors, where she demonstrates watercolor techniques and narrates her painting process. The channel has approximately 215,000 subscribers and over 13 million views.

Part of my fishing lure series, “Old Timers” (transparent watercolor, 18 x 24 in.) features my neighbor’s tackle box filled with antique lures. He even let me use some of the original packaging. I loved painting the cracked paint, glitter specks, hooks, and odd color combinations unique to these strange little fish, and to create the illusion of water and make things even more challenging, I placed everything on a semi-smooth sheet of foil.

Art paper giant Strathmore produced two pads of watercolor paper with step-by-step instructional material and exclusive videos by Kelly in 2016. Part of Strathmore’s Learning Series, Learn to Paint Watercolor Flowers and Learn to Paint Watercolor Basics are designed for people who are new to watercolor and want to learn more.

“Pop”(transparent watercolor, 18 x 24 in.) is one of the first times I’ve painted a still life on aluminum foil, and at first my reasons were practical: making little nests in the foil meant the gum balls wouldn’t roll around so much. And then I became absolutely fascinated with the complicated reflections I could see in these nests, which for me became the star of the show and marked the beginning of my foil addiction.

Kelly’s award-winning paintings are in private and public collections throughout the world, and she has shown her work in numerous one-person shows regionally and in China, Brussels, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. She is a signature member if the Illinois and Missouri watercolor societies, and she lives with her husband Jeff in northeast Missouri.

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