A visual essayist with a wanderlust
Kelynn is a Mexican American artist whose upbringing spanned the United States, South America, and the Middle East. Immersed in such diverse environments, she developed a deep appreciation for the richness of different cultures. Inspired by both her heritage and the people around her, Kelynn’s early passion for drawing and painting naturally evolved into a lifelong love of portraiture.
Kelynn received a scholarship to attend the MFA program Illustration as Visual Essay at the School of Visual Arts. There, she was encouraged to pursue her intuitive approach—traveling to connect with people firsthand and using her journal notes and sketches as the foundation for larger studio paintings.
For her thesis project, Kelynn collaborated with Time Magazine on an article titled “A Tale of Two Societies,” which explored the urban migration of highland Inca communities to Lima and the resulting cultural and economic tensions. With the support of her MFA Chair and mentor, Marshall Arisman, she traveled to Peru to conduct interviews, write essays, and create a body of portraits and sketches inspired by her fieldwork.
After earning her MFA, Kelynn collaborated with writers and contributed paintings to Time Australia, illustrating feature stories on immigration. She later traveled to Papua New Guinea with journalists from The Melbourne Age to interview and paint Prime Minister Paias Wingti for an article examining the tension between tribal warfare and urban migration. Kelynn also served as an on-location artist for Australian Geographic, joining scientific expeditions to document remote and environmentally sensitive regions across the continent.
During her time in Australia, Kelynn initiated a series of interviews and portrait studies of Aboriginal leaders, including Bill Neidjie, traditional custodian of Kakadu. These works were widely exhibited throughout Australia, as well as at the Australia Gallery in New York City and the Australian Embassy in Washington, D.C. Much of this collection is now held in permanent Australian collections.
Returning to her cultural roots, Kelynn turned her focus to Mexico, documenting the disappearing traditions of the Lacandon Maya through detailed drawings and paintings created in the rainforest communities of Chiapas. One of her murals—featuring portraits of Na Bolom’s founding director Gertrude Duby Blom and Lacandon elder Chan K’in Viejo—is showcased at the cultural institute Na Bolom in Chiapas. Building deep connections with the Lacandon community, Kelynn co-founded ArtMadeHere.org with San Francisco-based artist Michael Bartalos, establishing art workshops for underserved communities in Chiapas and Mexico City.
Kelynn Z. Alder’s work is featured in 100 New York Painters by Cynthia Maris Dantzic and has been commissioned by private collectors around the world, as well as by prestigious publications including The New Yorker, Time Magazine, and Australian Geographic. Her illustration work includes several books, notably Journey to the Bottomless Pit by Elizabeth Mitchell, which was named a “must read” by The New York Public Library. Another acclaimed project, Moments of Wonder by Barry Schieber, features Kelynn’s illustrations alongside essays chronicling the healing work of a therapy dog. A dog-lover herself, Kelynn also authored and illustrated The Photo Shoot, a whimsical chapbook recounting the adventures of her nearly human dog in the modeling world. She is currently writing a humorous memoir about pregnancy, suburban life on Long Island, and raising a mischievous Bernese Mountain Dog puppy.
Kelynn serves on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts in New York City and has taught or led workshops at institutions including the University of Utah, The Lower Eastside Girls Club, Gallery North, the Long Island Museum, the Heckscher Museum, the Smithtown Township Arts Council, the Southampton Arts Center, Nesconset Library, Patchogue-Medford Library, Instituto Na Bolom in Chiapas, Instituto Barragán in Mexico City, and with Indigenous communities throughout Chiapas, Mexico.
She was the guest curator for SOMOS, a landmark exhibition at the Long Island Museum (a Smithsonian affiliate) featuring 82 Latinx artists. Kelynn is also a founding member of LatinoArtsLI.org, a nonprofit dedicated to bridging cultural divides and expanding creative opportunities for artists from underrepresented communities.
Internationally recognized for her powerful portraiture, Kelynn captures the dignity and humanity of individuals across cultures—from Indigenous elders in the Mexican rainforest to sideshow performers in Coney Island. Whether working in her New York studio or abroad, her art reflects a deep reverence for her Mexican heritage and a steadfast commitment to elevating stories often overlooked—particularly those affected by injustice within the Latinx community.
MORE ON THE ORIGINS OF MY JOURNEY
Virtual Artist Encounters: Kelynn Alder
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The Photo Shoot is a funny short story about an artist, writer, teacher who becomes a stage mom for her Bernese Mountain Dog Osita— and all that’s involved in prepping the would-be star for her first ‘shoot’ in New York City. Osita, a beautiful mail-order-dog arrives into the author’s life via the JFK airport after a night of heavy tequila drinking with girlfriends. Hoping that this puppy will replace the well-behaved Bernese Mountain Dog she just lost, it soon becomes apparent that this Bernese Mountain Dog is far too spirited to mold herself into the family’s usual routines. After a dog trainer comments that her dog “is smarter than she is,” the mom steps up her training, and drags her son into being her assistant. Once she finally masters the method of clicker training, she and her dog are able to perform basic dog training command… LEARN MORE
ILLUSTRATED BY
KELYNN Z ALDER
The thrilling adventures of a slave who became known worldwide for his explorations of Mammoth Cave. If you toured Mammoth Cave in Kentucky in the year 1838, you would have been led by candlelight through dark, winding tunnels to the edge of a terrifying bottomless pit. Your guide would have been seventeen-year-old Stephen Bishop, an African American slave who became known around the world for his knowledge of Mammoth Cave. Based on the narratives of those who toured the cave with him, Journey to the Bottomless Pit is the first book for young readers ever written about Stephen Bishop.
Artist Statement: Love No Borders
Thirty years ago, I believed my role was as a sort of journalist-documentarian—to record as impartially as I could what I saw through sketching and painting. Aside from doing editorial portraits, I depicted Balthus Island Aboriginals hunting, tribal wars in Papua New Guinea, boardwalk scenes in Coney Island and the disappearing culture of the Lacandon Maya in Chiapas, Mexico.
As the daughter and granddaughter of Mexican immigrants, today I feel my role as an artist is not just to document what I witness, but to speak out against social injustices inflicted on Latinx communities across our country. I am particularly horrified by the cruelty of mothers being separated from their families by ICE, such as Irma Zea and Debora Barrios have been. Irma and Debora are just two in the thousands who have suffered from being separated from their children.
Debora had been in a sanctuary church separated from her family for 15 months. The last time I visited her in church she said, “People aren’t only being separated at the border—they are being split up across this country. I’ve spoken to over sixteen journalists and my situation hasn’t changed. Aqui estoy.” “I am (still) here.”
Irma was separated from her family and held in deportation in New Jersey for six months. She exhausted the savings she had accumulated over a dozen years for her 2 daughters’ college educations (as they are DACA students and not eligible for in-state tuition or foreign scholarships) in order to pay her legal fees to be freed. She is now in the process of seeking asylum.
I was moved by both Irma and Debora crossing their arms on their chests protectively, defiantly and independently when they posed for their portraits, My America and Aquí Estoy, respectively.
“Kelynn Alder is a fantastic artist, a serious professional and a wonderful human being. Her empathy with her subjects comes across clearly in her faithful, rich and nuanced portraiture, and she is truly a master of a wide range of techniques. Gifted, experienced and centered, Kelynn Alder is the real thing.”
“Kelynn Alder’s Coney Island collection is like a wild dream you know you should wake up from, but it’s too fascinating to leave just yet. And despite the artifice of the subjects’ costumes, their joy is genuine. Alder paints happiness as real as the relief of misfits who finally found a welcoming tribe.”
“Through her art, Kelynn provides the viewer with an inspiring way to experience her lifetime of focused commitment to documenting people, their cultures and oftentimes an unseen view of the corners of the world in which we live.”
“What Arthur B. Davies did for Ashcan artists and Warhol did for Campbell’s Soup cans, Kelynn Alder has done for Coney Island. With her trained eye and expert painterly technique, she has transfigured a slice of mundane life into the realm of high art. Like her wondrous Mexican street scenes, she has shed her kindly artistic light on what is often viewed as the quintessence of vulgarity and enabled us to see the beauty and the energy in America’s ionic Amusement Park. In so doing she has made some important icons of her own.”
As a painter, illustrator, and printmaker, Kelynn Alder is a dynamic artist. As guest curator of the Long Island Museum’s award-winning exhibition, SOMOS/We Are (2023), she developed a diverse and wonderful checklist of 82 artists of Latino heritage who have lived and/or worked on Long Island. LIM has been fortunate to add Kelynn’s work My America, to its permanent collection. This poignant, large-format portrait tells a moving story of diaspora and difficult passage. It’s the story of immigrant Irma Zea, originally from Mexico, who gained asylum here in Suffolk County only after a long detention and family separation. This acquisition has a powerful narrative that extends the Museum’s portrait collection into the 21st century with a story of relevance to all of us.
Alder paints history. A vivid colorist, a visual essayist, and a sensitive portraitist keenly aware of Mexican cultural heritage and the cycle of life and death, Kelynn Z. Alder is unparalleled in her use of Indigenous, political and religious iconography to create complex arrangements of memory, political commentary, and symbolism. Her imagery lifts up those who continue important traditions and rituals, and makes us aware of our place in the world and within the arc of human history.
In her show entitled Animal Spirits and Ancient Rituals at Gallery North, she delves into the ancestral rituals, beliefs and rites of her heritage to create vivid paintings and complex mono-prints and drawings.
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