BIO
Born in 1981 and raised in San Diego, CA, Kelsey Overstreet discovered her passion for painting in her early teens. She is an accomplished abstract painter and printmaker, working with water-based paints, oil sticks, thread, and spray paint. Overstreet received her MFA in 2018.
Her artistic journey is rooted in process-based abstraction, with conceptual explorations that delve into mark-making as a representation of both celebration and clean-up. The act of creating becomes a sensory sharing experience between the artist, observer, and a blueprint of contemporary human existence. Overstreet's choice of materials reflects themes of relationship, conflict, connection, resolve, and the beauty born from chaos.
With a diverse background in various mediums, including textile design and nontraditional printmaking, Overstreet spent three years in Italy crafting one-of-a-kind hand-printed textiles for unique clothing. These distinctive processes manifest in the explorative marks within her paintings.
Since 2001, Kelsey Overstreet has actively participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions across the USA. Her work has been featured in several magazines, and she has garnered awards and grants for her artistic contributions. Currently residing in San Diego, California, she shares her life with her husband and their two children.
Artist Statement
My artistic practice is a form of pilgrimage, exploring the deep intelligence of the body and its sacred dialogue with the animate world. I believe we are not separate from nature but a conscious expression of it; our nervous systems are microcosms of the greater ecological system, absorbing, processing, and being shaped by the stimuli of the living land.
My extensive walks are a ritual of listening—a way to quiet the ego and tap into the collective unconscious that hums beneath the surface of the seen world. This is my research: to fully inhabit my body as an instrument of perception, gathering not just images, but energies, memories, and the whispers of the land itself.
Through painting, I navigate the interplay of light and shadow, both in the external landscape and the internal psyche. I embrace the Jungian concept of the Shadow—not as something to be feared, but as a source of profound depth, creativity, and truth. The unpredictable flow of materials, the happy accident, becomes a collaboration with the unseen, allowing the painting to emerge from a place where spirit and matter meet. My work is an invitation to remember this ancient connection, to find the numinous in the storm's aftermath and the sacred in the overlooked.