Keltie Ferris on Abstraction, Body Prints, and Gender Transition

In a studio visit in Woodstock, New York, painter Keltie Ferris discusses his abstract paintings that embody contradictions—alone and together, hard and soft, opaque and transparent. His work combines spray gun mists, brushwork, palette knife edges, and erasure. Since the 2010s, Ferris has made body prints by pressing his oil-covered clothed body onto paper, inspired by Jasper Johns's body prints. These prints have subtly recorded his gender transition. His 2021 exhibition at Mitchell-Innes and Nash in New York featured a monumental wall drawing with layered canvases and graphite drawings in multicolored frames. Ferris was born in 1977 in Louisville, Kentucky; he holds a BA from Yale, a BFA from NSCAD (2004), and an MFA from Yale School of Art (2006). He now lives full-time in Woodstock. In 2018, a survey of his work was held at the Speed Museum of Art in Louisville. Ferris recalls his mother teaching herself to paint using how-to books, and the family critiquing her work at dinner.