Red by Kelvin Belt

Kelvin Belt has been working out of ECF Art Centers’ South LA studio since 2003. Belt works primarily in two-dimensional media, specifically painting and drawing. His artwork can be best understood as a visual negotiation between the impulse to retreat into oneself, immersing the imagination into the realms of the fantastic and mythological, and the desire to find a link between magic and the everyday. Belt’s drawings almost exclusively portray young women with large eyes and small facial features, an aesthetic influenced by classical twentieth century character animation designs connotative of innocence and empathy.

Belt is an avid student and connoisseur of popular media, including comic books and graphic novels. Music is a constant companion in the studio, vacillating between popular hip hop and pop. Throughout his career as a studio artist, he relentlessly strives to perfect his technical craft but even more so, strives to develop symbolic nuances within his work.