Poet, Painter and Musician T. Byron Kelly (born in Washington D.C.) has been working as an active performance artist in the South Western Virginia area for over two decades. Live, spontaneous lyric poetry performances and gallery exhibits have been at the heart of the Poet's work. As an Undergraduate and Graduate student, Byron studied with poets Nikki Giovanni, Lucinda Roy, Grace Bauer and Anne Bromley, as well as novelist Don Secreast and painter Janet Niewald. Byron received private art instruction during that time and was also a member of Tri-M (Modern Music Masters honor society). Byron studied the relationships between poetry, painting and music and soon began to illustrate his own poems with paintings and put them to music as well. Byron has also taught creative writing and composition on the college level and is a member of the Blue Ridge Studio-Virginia, the Appalachian Writers Association (A.W.A.),the Appalachian Authors' Guild (A.A.G.), the XYZ Gallery (Blacksburg, VA.), the Jacksonville Center for the Arts (Floyd,VA.) and the Montgomery Museum and Lewis Miller Regional Art Center (Christiansburg, VA).

I paint poems and found a kind of home there> My paintings have always been rather cartoon like and fantastically oriented, a rendering of a dream if you will- I always thought (about realist art) that if you wanted a photograph then why not take a snapshot with a camera?

Project End of Days-Selected Poems available@Amazon.com Poetry@ http://tbyronk.livejournal.com Music@ http://www.spectralarts.net http://www.myspace.com/spectralarts http://www.myspace.com/blueridgestudio http://www.youtube.com/spectralarts http://www.xyz-gallery.com/ http://montgomerymuseum.org

*Primary Influences Artistically> Alan Hovhaness /William Blake/ Li Ho/ Dante Alighieri/ Mattie Stepanek/Maya Angelou/Rainer Maria Rilke/Robinson Jeffers/Kenneth Patchen/William Everson/Hermann Hesse/Johann Wolfgang von Goethe/Robert Bly/ Boris Pasternak/ Fredrico Garcia Lorca/E.A.Poe/Ekiwah Adler Belendez/John Milton/Nathaniel Hawthorne/Ralph Waldo Emerson/Matsuo Basho/ J.M.W.Turner/ Henry Fuseli/ John Martin/ Vincent Van Gogh/ Claude Monet/ Francisco de Goya/Bob Kane/Edvard Munch/ Gustav Klimt. /Tom Waits/Simple Minds/The Doors/Bjork/U2 /Brian Eno/Peter Gabriel/Tears For Fears/Cocteau Twins/The Cure/Patti Smith//

ArtWanted.com Gallery:   Art/Drawing Misc.
Represented By: Blue Ridge Studio-Virginia