Kelsey Brookes was born in 1978 in Denver.
A formally trained scientist who spent years tracking viruses for the US government he now
resides in San Diego, California as a painter.
Kelsey’s current work started out as a distraction. About a year and a half ago while still doing representational work, he began making small circular paintings as a way to break up his fastidious process. These mandala-like paintings were simply an escape, a moment of respite from a practice that had become labored and overwrought; while interviewing Kelsey in his San Diego studio he stated, “I wasn’t having fun representing these figures over and over again anymore… I started doing these more abstracted paintings because they were a distraction, and I wanted that.”
And now Kelsey is fully immersed in this work - large, colorful, and methodical paintings based on his understanding of neurobiology, with a focus on the molecular structure of serotonin as well as hallucinogenic and pharmaceutical drugs and the visual patterns they create in our brains. via & via
