Mary Ferris Kelly

American • 20th Century • Tennessee

Mary Ferris Kelly is a native of Athens, Tennessee, and a longtime resident of Chattanooga. A graduate of the National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C., and Sophie Newcomb College in New Orleans, she has built a career marked by expressive paintings, drawings, and bronze sculptures that celebrate the vitality of the human spirit and the richness of the natural world.

Kelly is a former instructor in painting and drawing at Tennessee Wesleyan College and the Hunter Museum of Art in Chattanooga. Her work has been exhibited widely and has received numerous awards in competitive shows, including recognition in the Art in the Embassies Program, the Hunter Museum Annual Exhibits, the Central South Exhibition, Spectrum Exhibitions at the Hunter Museum, the Chattanooga Arts Festival, the Calloway Gardens Annual Exhibition, and the Savannah Arts Festival.

She has held one-person shows at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee; the Hunter Museum of Art; Tennessee Wesleyan College; Parthenon Gallery in Nashville; Southern College of Seventh-day Adventists in Collegedale; The Gallery at the Catholic Center in Dalton, Georgia; and other venues across Georgia, Washington, D.C., and North Carolina.

Kelly’s work has been featured in public and private collections throughout the United States, including museums in Tennessee, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. Several of her paintings have been selected for the U.S. State Department’s Art in the Embassies Program. Known for her vivid sense of color and emotional resonance, Kelly’s art reflects an enduring celebration of life, movement, and nature.

Mary Ferris Kelly lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she continues her work in painting, sculpture, and drawing. She has been listed in Outstanding Young Women in America.