...as seen by Claude Miquel

.

Kellestom, whose name she wishes to keep a mystery, has hair with luminous highlights, a bob cut to the chin and a sleek fringe à la Chantal Thomass. She looks at you with eyes that are both lively and sad, outlined with eyeliner. When she speaks, she adds expressive gestures at chest height to her words, undoubtedly to give emphasis to her small stature. 

She is a sporty woman, in jeans and a T-shirt, who leads you briskly through the streets of New York, tumbling down subway stairs at the speed of her mind. Chic , she is too. She will find a way to "doll up" for the vernissage, even with a busy schedule: she will be the lady in black with her fingerless gloves. As she is a designer , she will wear extraordinary transparent plastic pumps with red heels and a red ring on her finger as a reminder. A nod to the tones of some of her paintings?

She is a strong woman because she is both available to others and detached. Attentive, she knows how to hear the distress of a travel companion. She also reaches out to others: on the ferry taking us to the Statue of Liberty in 30-degree sun, she will lend her hat to an elderly Swedish lady. She is also greedy and epicurean , suggesting we share a well-deserved snack break after a long walk. Kellestom gives, then she knows how to refocus on herself, to draw within for a time: on the upper deck of the bus that takes us around Manhattan, she sometimes retreats into her thoughts or solitary observations. 

Kellestom, sensitive to the love of others, takes on disarming little girl airs, jumping up and down when she learns of her friend Charlélie Couture's visit to the vernissage, or hugging painter Smira and his wife who invite her to dinner.

Kellestom is curious , loves to travel, and memories of the countries visited with her husband make her loquacious and amazed. Intelligent , of course, to be capable of changing her mind. Not particularly attracted to natural history museums, she will nevertheless follow us through the corridors of the New York one to discover and observe representations of animals from all continents and figments of pygmies! Living material that, judging by her writings, constitutes a constant source of inspiration in her pictorial approach...

Finally, the artist Kellestom  : it was indeed art that brought us together, her and I and others, in this collective exhibition in New York. Always in search of beauty, she handles her camera in her own way, thanks to her keen eye that selects and frames in the street. Her oil painting and mixed media drawings deliver clear or obscure X-rays of cities and men. Kellestom loves elegant, balanced things, and the website she created (www.kellestom.com) is further proof of this. 

Her reasoned and sensitive work is not the work of a kook, as she sometimes likes to call herself, but that of a courageous, independent, and free artist in her creation whom I met during these five days in New York.   

Claude Miquel.  (Artist exhibiting in New York with Kellestom)