Kelley Fine Art Publishing - Meet Rick Kelley

My name is Rick Kelley,an artist.

This story begins after 9-11-01. Through out my life I have always felt that I had a stronger purpose in life than just painting a bunch paintings. My desire to follow my heart in helping others was as strong as my desire to create. With the attack on our country on 9-11 I saw an opportunity to use my God given talent to help others. Over the next year I created three paintings ,'On Freedoms Wing', 'Liberties Flight', and 'Reflections of Freedom'. We at Kelley Fine Arts decided to not only give 10% of the sales from the prints of these 3 original paintings, but to donate an endless amount of prints to any entity that could raise money for the victims of 9-11. Our donations were given to both the Todd Beamer foundation, and the Liberty Disaster relief fund through the American Red Cross.

Apparently following my heart was the right thing to do because the project was a huge success. One of the things I had learned from the events following 9-11 was that from everything bad that happens in life tremendous good comesout of it. The way this country had pulled together with unconditional love towards each other was nothing short of miraculous and gave me a directionfor my heart to follow.

In 2002, a company called Messenger licensed the freedom series to use as bereavement and stationary for the funeral industry.This bereavement has become the top selling stationary in the funeral industry. Messenger has also explained to me that 99% of the families who have lost a soldier in this current war have selected my bereavement for there family members funeral.These are the same soldiers who have volunteered to defend our country because of 9-11 and gave the last measure of devotion to our country. What an honor! This is not about politics or weather or not we should be in Iraq. This is about unconditional love for a country at the cost of the greatest sacrifice,our brother, sister, son, daughter, father,or mothers life. I teach my children that besides the unconditional love a dog gives you, God also teaches us that when you give love truly unconditionally, it returns back to you the same way.There is no greater gift.

Coming full circle now, I have an opportunity to give again. About a year ago I started working another project, this time for those families who gave so much. Since the beginning of the first painting, 'On Freedoms Wing', I have created two more patriotic paintings, 'The Patriot', and 'Coming Home'. In the beginning , we at Kelley Fine Art, started with the idea that we would give one of there choice of the medium size print of 'On Freedoms Wing','The Patriot', or 'Coming Home', To these families as a thank you for there sacrifice.This would have been a simple thing to do, but we didn't want them to have to pay for the framing or shipping, so we seaked out a sponsorship for that cost.

A friend of mine, Kevin Warren the VP of operations for the Minnesota Vikings football team asked how he could help? Currently we are working on getting all the teams of the NFL to try to sponsor their own state and the surrounding states that don't have teams. Once the sponsorship is secured, letters will be put together, given to the Department of Defense to mail out to all of the families of our fallen, thanking them for this great sacrifice, and asking them witch one of the three they would like, and how they would like it personalized. The letter will also explain that this is a gift from the
people of the United States as a thank you for the greatest sacrifice and we as a country will never forget.

It is my goal to to try to create this unconditional love for this country without the sacrifice, or the pain that usually precedes it.

- Rick Kelley