Today we’d like to introduce you to Kellesimone Waits.
Kellesimone, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I was born in LA and lived here off and on until I was 11, I recently moved back about 9 months ago and couldn’t be happier with the decision. LA has always felt like home to me, I’ve shown here more than anywhere else, and I think I really wanted to move back ever since I left when I was a kid.
I’ve painted for as long as I can remember. Most kids make art if given the opportunity, I just never stopped. I don’t know that I have the choice. I make art for myself and because I have to.
Most of my work has some underlying narrative. As a child, I painted princesses hanging out together and as a woman today I am working with a science fiction mythology I have created about Astrokitties and Astrobunnies wrestling and radiating together.
Astrobunnies are transient parasitic creatures from outer space that travel around in rainbow light pods. They’ve decided to land and take up residence on our planet. The Astrobunnies latch onto our heads and feed off of our fears, our feelings of self-loathing, and hatred. They then process and use these negative feelings to produce a chemical that dumps into our system. This chemical causes us to feel peaceful, blissed out and sometimes results in the host experiencing spontaneous orgasms.
In addition to wiping out our fears and negative emotions, the Astrobunnies turn everyone into women. They feel that they’re doing us a favor. Based on their apparent attraction to the female form, they think everyone would look better as a lady.
Leaving behind some and taking much away, the Astrobunnies feel they are improving on us, doing us a favor even. But, If they were to choose to leave us we would all die. Having lost too much of our independent will to live by relying on them to feel good and having had all that’s negative sucked from us as well, we would just drift around as empty shells of what was once human and eventually pass into nothing.
I traveled a lot as a kid and perhaps felt transient myself. Feeling good all the time does have its appeal as well, but I’m considering the consequences in my work. I believe I’m still painting princesses like I did when I was a girl and am inspired by many of the same sources like Rainbow Brite, Mythology, and The Last Unicorn. The princesses have just matured into something a bit stranger as I have also matured into someone who’s pretty strange.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I have been working on my series of Astrokitties and Astrobunnies for over three years now. I mostly work in acrylic on canvas but have also made drawings, sculptures and done murals. In the past six months, I have been focusing on mixed media pieces on found images.
The female form and notions of femininity are a continuous focal point in my work as are physical, emotional, mental and allegorical transformations. I am exploring ideas of sexual freedom, shattered inhibitions, and bliss, as they can be related to chemical intervention and altered or obscured identity. I am interested in possible ways to alleviate fear, how it ties into identity vs. anonymity, and its effects on female sexuality.
Astrobunnies are aliens who have come here to Earth bringing with them their culture of orgasmic bliss, and beauty. They proceed to forcefully eradicate any sort of negativity on Earth for their own selfish ends by literally feeding off of us, the civilization that they are colonizing. The Astrokitties then arrive and are trying to take over (also using our bodies as hosts, to better battle the Astrobunnies). But the culture of orgasmic bliss is so powerful that it is affecting the Astrokitties as well, altering their battle methods and states of mind. Instead of fighting to the death, they all begin to just wrestle and radiate together.
This is my story. My experience of my own work that in a way serves as an armature for me to create around. I’ve always worked best when I have a storyline and draw inspiration from many sources including film and literature. The 1983 film Hercules is a current favorite, I don’t know how many times I’ve watched The Last Unicorn, and Grimms’ Fairy Tales, The First Edition, is a source of inspiration for me too.
That said, I don’t need my viewer to take any one thing in particular away from the work. I feel that in a way the work is completed once it’s seen by others. It gets to come alive in a way that it can’t when it’s alone in my studio and who am I to say what someone can or cannot think or feel about it.
Do current events, local or global, affect your work and what you are focused on?
I try to keep my head down and just make my work. I’m not entirely interested in getting mixed up in a political agenda, but I am sensitive and, what’s going on around me does seep into my work.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
My website, you can inquire about available works via my contact page, your support is much appreciated!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.kellesimonewaits.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kellesimonewaits/
Image Credit:
Kellesimone Waits
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