Ever since I was a child messing around with a terrible paint set from K-mart, I have been obsessed with controlling pigment suspended in water. Now I paint with divine, hand-made watercolors from Holland along with brushes ranging from high-end to dirt cheap, but the obsession remains. I create large, highly realistic portraits, still lifes, florals, and occasional landscapes using the most unpredictable, unstable, and unforgiving medium known to man. My paintings are both time-consuming and backbreaking, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I have always tried to take watercolor as far as it can go, and as a result my work resembles oil paintings in terms of color richness and detail. Hearing my viewers say, “THAT’S a watercolor?” always makes me smile.

Lately I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time creating a series of people and their collections, especially their books. No matter what else is going on in a painting, I always start with my subject’s face, building it glaze by glaze. My people seem to emerge from the white paper as though they were slowly rising up from a vat of milk, and when this happens I fall in love–there’s no other word for it–with everything that makes them unique: wrinkles, 5 o’clock shadows, freckles, rogue gray hairs. (My latest muse is my husband Jeff, who is bashful yet tolerant of my compulsion to paint him, and whose face I hope to document for many years.) I delight in challenging myself: can I paint woodgrain, denim, plaid shirts, or even Persian rugs? I’m pleased and relieved to report that I can. My subjects’ eyes rarely address the viewer; I prefer to show these people absorbed in their own worlds. And if their worlds are populated with dozens of books, I’m a happy painter. The addition of several dozen book spines can say so much about my mute subjects–their lifestyles, their beliefs…in short, the contents of their minds. I’ve always been vaguely uncomfortable when a stranger examines my own bookshelf; it’s a strangely intimate act. Adding books (or anything else my subjects love) brings my subjects that much closer to my viewers. So if I come to paint you, make sure you have all of your books in a row!

Thank you for visiting my site,

Kelly Eddington

Kelly Eddington’s paintings have been exhibited in solo and group venues throughout the state, including the Peoria Art Guild, Champaign-Urbana’s Boneyard Arts Festival, the Prairie Earth Gallery, and the Eagle’s Nest art group. Her work is in private and public collections, including WIU’s permanent library collection.  Her paintings were featured at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland as part of a special U2 exhibition.  She worked for seven years as an illustrator and writer for @U2, which was named “Best Music Fan Site” by Entertainment Weekly.

Ms. Eddington has been an award-winning Illinois art educator for seventeen years, teaching in Oregon High School and Unity High School.  She was named Ogle County’s art educator of the year and the Oregon Chamber of Commerce’s woman of the year in education.

Kelly Eddington received a B.A. in studio art from WIU and an M.A. in art education from the University of Illinois. She is an associate member of the Illinois Watercolor Society.

Selected Juried Shows
- “Self-Portrait”, Illinois Watercolor Society 26th Annual Open Exhibition, 2010.
- “Last Dinner in Italy”, Illinois Watercolor Society Small Waters Show, 2010
- “Mabel” and “Married with Cats”, Portrait Society of Atlanta Fall Exhibition, 2010.