The Watercolor Artwork Of Mike Killelea

Michael Killelea is an artist, author, teacher and traveler. He was born in Brooklyn, NY and has lived most of his life east of there on Long Island. He currently lives to the north in Elma, NY where he divides his time between painting, teaching and lecturing. He is a US Navy veteran and an avid outdoorsman, two parts of his spirit which are reflected in the dance of light and shadows throughout the wide natural world he paints. In spite of his sometimes frantic efforts, he never seems to have enough time to capture the beauty he see's at every turn. Killelea is an inveterate "plein-air" painter who feels that the watercolor medium is most alive when painting on location and he takes delight in sharing that joy with his students, most recently at a week long workshop at the Bucks County Art Workshops in Pennsylvania. He has traveled extensively, and almost always with paint and brush, recording his impressions of people and places around the world.

Killelea's work and biography have been included along with other selected members of the American Society of Marine Artists, in the Smithsonian Institution's Library for the American Art Museum/National Portrait Gallery and have become the basis for a permanent file on him there. His watercolors have additionally been featured at the BJ Spoke Gallery in Huntington, NY, the Marineart Gallery in Manhattan, and in numerous local exhibits elsewhere on Long Island. They are currently on display at the Castello di Borghese vineyard in Cutchogue, NY, the Terrence Joyce Gallery in Greenport, NY, and 57 of them were featured in a major solo exhibition at the New York Mercantile Exchange in NYC. A collection of his Huntington (NY) Harbor paintings were selected to comprise the premier show at the Town of Huntington's online art exhibit, sponsored by now Long Island Congressman Steve Israel. His paintings have also been exhibited at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, WA, the Cummer Art Museum in Jacksonville, FL, the Museum in the US Merchant Marine Academy, Kings Point, NY, the Riverfront Art Center in Wilmington, DE, the Cultural Art Center of Cape Cod in Dennis (MA), the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum (MD), the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath (ME), the Noyes Museum of Art in Oceanville, NJ, the Spartanburg (SC) Art Museum, the New Bedford (MA) Art Museum, and in the Vero Beach Art Museum in Florida. Two of his paintings were part of an exhibit in the Capital Building in Washington, DC and became part of the US Navy Museum collection in Washington.

He is a Signature member of the American Society of Marine Artists (ASMA), is on their Board of Directors, their Exhibitions Committee and is Chairman of the ASMA Regions Committee. He's a graduate of SUNY Farmingdale and has attended Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts. His work is in numerous private collections, has been reproduced on book and magazine covers, posters, prints & greeting cards and is featured in two books he wrote and illustrated about Long Island's rural North Fork.

His watercolor paintings were also featured in a major article in the Spring 2005 issue of Watercolor Magazine*. Click to view a copy of the article.
* As published in 'Watercolor' magazine, Spring 2005.
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