The five large paintings titled Same Same, as well as the name of this exhibition, borrow their titles from the 2019 novel of the same name by Peter Mendelsund. The protagonist in the book attends an international artists’ residency of sorts in a far away desert. While there, he discovers the Same Same shop where the shopkeeper has the mysterious ability to replicate and even make better any item brought into the shop. I was listening to this audiobook while working on the first of my 42” x 40” paintings, which was based on one of my more intimately sized (11.5”x 10.5”) collage/mixed media works. As I listened to the story of the Same Same shop, I thought, well here I am making my own Same Same. The novel was difficult to get through (as was that first large painting). It was hard. It was sad. It made me consider hard questions about art and creating. It warned against emptiness and meaninglessness in creating … in life. I have carried on working in this larger scale.

Initially, I continued to “same same” my smaller completed mixed media pieces. In 2021, however, I began creating new collage-driven narratives that I took straight to the canvas. Contrary to the “same sames” in the novel, my Same Sames have developed to be ever more personal and full of meaning. The smaller pieces in this exhibition are bits of nostalgia for me. They are a dear and essential part of the evolution of my work.

Artist Bio

Kelly Duffield’s paintings contain collage-driven scenes of domestic life that are often strange, surreal and sufficiently ambiguous to evoke the viewer’s imagined or projected meanings. Allowing found images to influence the narrative brings Duffield’s subconscious thoughts to the work and results in combining imagery in unexpected ways to convey unspoken thoughts and meaning. Duffield (born 1970, Oklahoma, as Kelly Becton) received a BA in Art history and a BFA in Graphic Design from Oklahoma State University in 1993, after a printmaking internship at Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) in New York. Duffield received a JD, with Honors from the University of Oklahoma College of Law in 1997 and went on to practice law for many years. Since returning to her original passion of art, Duffield has had solo exhibitions at Naropa University (Boulder, CO) and 15th Street Gallery (Boulder, CO). She has also exhibited at Redline Contemporary Art Center (Denver, CO), Seidel City (Boulder, CO), Barrett Art Center (Poughkeepsie, NY) and Site:Brooklyn (Brooklyn, NY), among others. Duffield lives and works in the foothills of Boulder, CO with her husband, five children and two golden retrievers.