GIFTED! The art of Percy Kelly.

Date Posted: 17th August 2026

Hi everyone.

There’s been a bit of a gap between newsletters to say the least.  I apologise.  I am totally caught up in my new Kelly book. I have been pressing on with it and gathering new information bringing even more surprises.  I have found myself going down a few rabbit holes only to find myself in unknown and fascinating  territory.  Anyway all the writing is done (er possibly?) and the next thing is the best - the images! I am so looking forward to sorting those out. Thousands of his works have passed through my hands in the last 30 years (yes surprisingly some have even ended up on my walls!)  More collections of PK’s letters have also come my way.  He spent his last years in Norfolk writing his illustrated letters to everyone he knew because he was desperately lonely and in exile.   Everyone had given up on him in despair. He mainly wrote to his last and most loyal friend Joan David in his favourite place - Cumbria.  She answered every letter he sent to her over the ten years at the end of his life. I am becoming more discerning in reading between the lines. I have read so many now - multiple thousands in fact - and can usually tell when he is being truthful or just boasting. 

The title of the book will be GIFTED a word that was very familiar to him.   He was born with this amazing ability to express himself through his art and was lauded for the rest of his life for it. From the moment his twin brother John watched him draw the teapot on the kitchen table and ran to get his mother to see it, Percy was praised, adored and treated differently for something he knew he had not earned. It was a gift that did not bring him happiness. All the admiration it engendered made him alone, opinionated and boastful towards the end of his life.  

It is now 36 years since Kelly died and the questions are mounting. Why did he happily give his work away to people he liked but refuse to sell especially when he had no money at all.  Why didn’t he put people in his work? Why did he change his name in 1985.  Why did he only paint 30 oils? Why did he die intestate and in poverty when his work meant so much to him.  Why didn’t he look after his work better if it meant so much to him - he almost lost it all in the most expensive bonfire of his life by leaving his will unclear, unsigned, crossed out and altered many times.

Perhaps I should title the book WHY?  But then I would have to ask myself WHY NOT?

I am now working through the illustrations which are glorious - far better than words. There is a lifetime’s work to choose from. I am sure to get sidetracked again, but I’m aiming to get it published by next spring. I’ll let you know.

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