For centuries now, clothes have no longer been a mere means of covering one’s body: after being for decades a symbol of one’s social class, in the last century they became a way of expressing one’s values, ideals or simply oneself.
Kelly Beeman is well aware of this and this is why clothing is the real protagonist of her work.
Kelly Beeman is a self-taught artist who now lives and works in New York and whose work lies somewhere between figurative painting and fashion illustration, but her attention and passion for clothes has not always been part of her art.
Kelly began by drawing nudes, focusing on the shapes and lines of the bodies. Only later did she discover the potential of fashion and begin to use the different garments to characterise the characters she illustrated.
With a technique involving a dark, thin outline and flat backgrounds, the protagonists in Kelly Beeman’s paintings all look alike, and it is the clothes she wears that characterise them and make them into strong, sophisticated women whose style we would love to copy.
Her attention to detail and the beauty of her work has not only struck a chord with her followers on Instagram – almost 120,000 – but has also caught the attention of various fashion brands with whom she has begun to collaborate, including none other than JWAnderson, Loewe, Tory Burch, Elie Saab and Marie Claire.
Read also: Moroccan culture in the illustrations by Myriam au citron
We have selected just a few of her works, to discover all the others follow Kellu Beeman on Instagram.
