BIOGRAPHY

Kelly Jenkins (b 1980)

Kelly was born and raised in Pembrokeshire, Wales where she gained her 1st class Honours Degree in Textile Art at The West Wales School of Art in 2002. She then went on to gain her MA in Textiles from the Royal College of Art in 2004. Kelly drew wide success from her graduate show with her entire collection of knitted paintings bought by Blain Southern, London. She has since gone onto successfully exhibit and sell her work globally.

Previous major international exhibitions include Knit 2 Together with the Craft Council (2005), Strikk 7 at the West Norway Museum of Decorative Art (2007) and Knitted Worlds at the Audax Textile Museum in the Netherlands (2008). Kelly was invited to hold her first solo show in 2005 at The Livingstone Studio, London NW3, with her conceptual textile installation “Translating Emotions”. In 2012 she was invited by The Watford Museum Gallery, London to hold another solo show ‘Paint With Thread’. This exhibition lit the sparks of her journey and relationship with stitched thread on canvas.

Her work can be found in private collections in London, the US, Europe and the Far East. She has received several awards for her textile art including The New Designers Lucienne Day Award (2002), The John Lewis Interiors Award (2003), and in 2018 she was selected as one of the Secret Art Prize finalists.

Kelly’s work has received international recognition through publications as Blueprint, Elle Interiors, Grand Designs, Icon, Financial Times and Crafts Magazine. She has also undertaken radio and TV interviews concerning the subject of Textile Art; chairing debating panels on art practice and judging textile competitions including the UK’s NEC’s annual National Knitting Show.

She also has a wealth of teaching experience; gaining her teaching qualification in 2007 from Canterbury Christ Church College UK. She taught art at St Joseph’s Academy London where she was Artist In Residence and went onto to become Head of Textiles at St Matthews Academy in London (2009). Kelly has lectured on the subject of art and textiles at institutions including West Wales School of Art and Oxford Brookes University and in 2011 Kelly founded Abbotts Ann Arts, a creative educational hub in Hampshire.