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Juan Kelly grew up in Limon, Costa Rica where he began painting at the age of six. He is well-known in his native Costa Rica and has exhibited his work extensively throughout Europe, America, and Jamaica. During much of his career he painted realistic Dutch-master still lifes, and many of the traditional elements in those paintings are still found in his work. Contradictory elements appear throughout Kelly's work: objects and animals coexist in an exotic, surreal world with its own laws and logic. The lighthearted, playful, and unreal qualities of his paintings emerge as a deliberate departure from academic realism. Yet his departure from realism into a visual fantasy land is less a... [more]

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