About

I create portraits that are emotional, unusual, and tell stories about identity. My approach to watercolor is meticulous, and I love creating difficult painting problems that no one else would want to solve. Lately these problems have involved my projector, which I use to shoot images onto my subjects. The resulting watercolors become two-in-one paintings, such as my father covered with a farm, my niece inside fireworks, or myself emerging from a nebula or trapped behind stained glass. I recently completed a series about the symptoms of perimenopause. My current series is called Visionaries and is a tribute to artists I admire. I project the artist’s work onto their face and body, take photos, and create paintings based on them. I am also working on a four-seasons series that addresses climate change.

Bio

Kelly Eddington was born in west-central Illinois and received a B.A. in painting and drawing from Western Illinois University and an M.A. in art education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was a high school art teacher for seventeen years before deciding to pursue painting full-time in 2010. Film critic Roger Ebert became an early fan of Eddington’s paintings when he recognized one of his books in the background of Kelly’s portrait of a little girl named Mabel.

Kelly’s YouTube channel has over 200,000 subscribers. In 2016, her videos inspired Strathmore to produce two pads of watercolor paper, complete with step-by-step instructional material and videos by Kelly. Learn to Paint Watercolor Flowers and Watercolor Basics are designed for people new to the medium. You can read about them here.

Kelly is a signature member of the American Watercolor Society, the National Watercolor Society, the Transparent Watercolor Society of America, the Southern Watercolor Society, the Illinois Watercolor Society, Women in Watercolor, and the Watercolor USA Honor Society, where she serves as a board member and edits their newsletter. Kelly was a faculty member at Watercolor Live! in 2025. For the past four years, she was one of the painters representing the United States on at Fabriano in Acquarello , Bologna, Italy. She recently exhibited a self-portrait as one of the “masters” at International Watercolor Masters in Lilleshall, England, and she won the Lena Newcastle prize at this year's AWS Annual International Exhibition.

Two of Eddington's paintings of the rock band U2 are part of The Little Museum Of Dublin’s permanent collection. She has received numerous awards and shown her work in one-person shows and group exhibitions in China, Belgium, Spain, England, Italy, and the United States, including the Illinois State Museum and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 

A relatively-recent Illinois transplant, Kelly lives in rural northeast Missouri with her husband Jeff. Their self-designed home near Mark Twain Lake is made of styrofoam and steel.

Quotes!

"I have never seen watercolors with the technical mastery Kelly Eddington commands. There is also so much heart and such an embrace of color."   -- Roger Ebert

"Oh, that's so cool. Isn't that brilliant?" -- Bono

Info

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