Artist Statement: For me, the tiny sparrow represents our small place in the greater universe and our connection to all living things on earth. Our hope for the future lies in knowing we are all in God’s hands.
Mathew:25-27
Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is life not more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
Bio: Kelly Best Bourgeois developed a profound and lifelong love of nature growing up in Corpus Christi, TX and experiencing the ever-changing scenery and wildlife along the Texas Gulf Coast. She began painting with oils at the age of 11, then attended the University of Texas in Austin, and earned her M.D. degree from the University of Texas McGovern Medical School in Houston.
She spent time in the art filled and history rich city of New Orleans during her internship and residency training in Anesthesiology at Tulane University Medical School before settling in Houston where she married, raised her family, and continued her art studies with the Houston Museum of Fine Arts Glasell School of Art and the Art League of Houston, while maintaining her medical practice as an ABA diplomate.
In recent years, Bourgeois has also studied in workshops in Round Top,Texas, New Orleans, The Scottsdale Artists’ School, Monhegan Island, Maine, and Provence France. Since retiring from medicine in 2020 to devote more time to her passion for art, she continues traveling to different locations to paint en plein air, using her experience in nature to create larger oil paintings in her Houston studio. Kelly also enjoys sharing her passion, techniques, and knowledge in the workshops she teaches.
She has earned numerous awards and honors and her paintings are part of private collections across the United States and as far away as the UK and Warsaw, Poland. She is a member of the Oil Painters of America, The American Impressionist Society, and the American Artists Professional League. In 2021 her “Deep in the Heart” solo exhibition of Texas landscapes was shown in the Kucera Gallery at the Art Center of Corpus Christi, and through the generous support or the Joe Barnhart Foundation of Houston, she exhibited her paintings in the Beeville Art Museum as a solo exhibition entitled “Lone Star Gifts” in 2022.
In 2023 Sawyer Yards in the Houston Arts District featured Kelly and two other artists in the “Loud Quiet”, a landscape exhibition exploring the smallness one feels in the face of epic landscapes. Kelly welcomes commissions and visitors to her Sabine Street Studio #116 during Second Saturday Open Studios in the Sawyer Yards Arts District of Houston.
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