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This memoir is a love letter to creativity and an exploration of what it means to redefine oneself in the wake of change. Framed by the legacy of Indiana watercolor artist Rob O’Dell, The Artist, Ladoga, Indiana invites readers to embrace their own extraordinary, ordinary lives, reminding us that art can be a bridge connecting hearts across time and space.
Inspired by her father’s creative impulse, imagination, and legacy, Kelly shares her story of facing her father’s loss—and finding herself.
Selected images described in the book can be viewed below.
Friday Flurries
6" x 9"
Road to Raccoon
14 x 21”
Midnight and Moonlight
10" x 14"
What Comes Naturally
Winter Stump
Scene just outside the picture window in Dad’s original studio, a repurposed
granary behind our house.
Reaching Out
Indiana Bell “Artist of the Year,” 1980
No Hunting
11" x 14"
Going Home
6" x 9"
Description: A lone barn, straight on, with a purple-and-orange sunset shining through the open hayloft door
Unfinished
29” x 22”
Fallen Treasures
26” x 20”
Finders Keepers
14" x 22"
Junkyard filled with a jumble of boats, doors, and metal burn barrels in the “Lost and Found” style
Untitled
Example of breakout technique
Schmidt Goose Decoy
22" x 29"
Kelly Green
21" x 29"
Annie’s Garden
21" x 14"
Standing Room Only
13" x 9"
Change Over
20" x 18"
Vignettes
30" x 40"
Small vignettes of different objects (a tree, a fence, a barn) with handwritten descriptions of the techniques used to paint them beside each one
End of a Day
14" x 10"
Unruffled Calm
20" x 14"
Forerunner
24" x 20"
One of four scenes from the Prairie Heritage Print Collection offered in 1974 by Citizens National Bank in Decatur, Illinois
Sugar Tree Farm
30" x 22"
Painted in 1976 to be reproduced as lithograph prints, it was named after my family’s farmstead in Ladoga.