Kelcy Timmons Chan (@mixt.paints)’s work explores themes on intersectionality, queerness, biracialism, individuality and belonging. Their work centers mixed people and does so through the consideration of their own experience. They are mixed race, mixed gender and often very mixed up, tackling anxiety, dysmorphia, and imposter syndrome. By examining her own identity in proximity to, as well as isolated from, the people surrounding her, Kelcy has begun to self-actualize as the mixed person and artist they have always been. She wants her work to uplift and connect with people who have intersectionality and who feel they are many things at once.

The goal of their pieces is to show how our unique qualities and our similarities to those around us create bonds and division, igniting many forms of togetherness and isolation, constantly affecting each of our senses of belonging, fulfillment, and self-understanding. 

Kelcy is very inspired by the artists Keith Haring, MC Escher, and Yayoi Kusama – specifically, the approach in Haring’s work, where he melded an accessible style with politically driven topics. She likes to emulate a similar approach in her work by also using accessible imagery to portray perspectives from the mixed experience.   

Using patterns, optical illusions, and repetition, Kelcy attempts to package these relatable complex subjects into intricate, captivating compositions, showing us that we are oddly as much the same, as we are uniquely different.  

Kelcy Timmons Chan (she/they) is a Cantonese Canadian American queer artist based in Toronto. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Vancouver, Kelcy is second generation Asian American born from immigrant parents. Since graduating from the University of Toronto as a Visual Studies Specialist from the Daniel’s Faculty of Landscape Architecture and Design, they have worked in Toronto as a contemporary pop artist, mural painter, illustrator, and graphic designer. Kelcy is gender fluid and uses she/they pronouns interchangeably.

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