Kelly Ehrhorn 

Why do you use the medium you use?

I've been creating art since I was very young, and although I've grown in talent and expanded in subject matter - I've always stuck to pen ink and regular pencils for my medium.

What role does art play in your life?

For me, art is a way to meditate and journal along with giving me confidence.  I can take all the poison within me and use it to create something dark and beautiful.  I can channel all them bleak emotions and expel them onto paper.  The confidence comes with the ability to create a new reality just from the things that exist only within my own soul.

What inspires you to create?

I'm less inspired and more compelled.  I don't say, "hey, this makes me want to create something".  I more accurately think, "I need to turn this feeling into a  new reality more than I need air."  The things that spark this experience come in the form of sights, emotions, and events.

Transformation Statement

Hi, my name is Kelly James Ehrhorn.  Everyone knows me by Chaos, though.  I've been drawing since before I can remember.  I love art - I'm drawn to it because it is a way I can take my pain and anger, all my desires, all my internal chaos and create a whole new reality out of it, using just a pen or pencil and piece of paper.

A Misleading Cover - I drew a self portrait for before and after I added all my tattoos, one half showing tattoos, prison bars, but with angel wings and a halo.  The other half, no tatts but with devil horns and demon wings with an outside backdrop signifying freedom.  This piece describes my last 5-7 years.  I was so bitter and angry and entitled, but I could pass as a straight laced jock by my appearance.  I went to prison, was in and out from 18-24, when I got with my wife.  After me and her got together I slowly started changing internally, becoming more loving, affectionate, and caring.  Developing a moral platform which I strictly adhere to.  All the while, I was trying to learn how to tattoo with myself as my canvass.  I'm in prison now because I hurt someone who takes pleasure in victimizing women, kids and anyone weaker than him.  He threatened my family and I took justice into my own hands.  I don't regret it and I also take no glory in it.  I'll be home soon even better and more humble than when I left home. 

The piece [A Hell Escaped] shows my hands reaching from the flames protecting my heart which holds a portrait of me and my wife.  In the flames are demonic faces to show a life of violence and hate left behind in the past.  On my hands are broken handcuffs, showing how this love I have now has freed me from a life of misery and condemnation.  This picture in all just shows how any true transformation happens from within ones heart and can usually only be motivated by love, no matter what form that love takes.  For me, that love is my wife and marriage.  I'm a very lucky man.  I'm blessed with an amazing woman who has inspired me to be the best man I can, even though she met me at my worst.