Jeff’s Story

The best way to get to know any artist is by experiencing their work, and this website is filled with Jeff’s artistic lifework. Engaging his art here in three genres (writing, music, and visual art), you may become intimately acquainted with him. Nevertheless, here are some of the details of his life.

          Jeff R. Kelland was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland, on December 11, 1958. His childhood was happy and pleasant, and in 1975 he graduated from high school. In 1985, he enrolled at Memorial University of Newfoundland in pursuit of a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy, and a minor in German. While pursuing his degree, Jeff founded the MUN Philosophy Society and served as president for three years; he was an Associate Editor of a philosophy students’ journal, and tutored logic for three years. As an undergraduate, Jeff represented Memorial at the 1987 Graduate Students’ Conference in Philosophy in Guelph, Ontario, succeeded in procuring the 1989 conference for Memorial, which he organized and coordinated, and by all accounts it was an unqualified success.

          While attending Memorial, Jeff was three times awarded the Dr. John M. and Elsa S. Morgan Scholarship in Philosophy. In 1988, he won the D.A.A.D. scholarship from the German government for proficiency in his 11 German courses at Memorial and, as a result, spent three months in Europe attending the University of Freiburg in Germany’s Black Forest. He also spent two weeks researching the original works of Martin Heidegger at the Schiller Institute in Marbach, Germany. In 1989, Jeff graduated from Memorial with an honours, first class BA in philosophy and German.

Since then, Jeff has earned a Diploma in Applied Ethics, with a specialty in mental health ethics; and most recently, he achieved a Master’s of Science degree in Community Health from the School of Medicine at Memorial; his groundbreaking thesis and scholarly article revealing the disproportionately low funding for mental health and illness research in Canada.

          Over the years, Jeff has worked in a lot of different positions (insurance, real estate, carpentry, fish plant worker, production manager, fisheries officer, ethics policy designer, etc.), but his facility with the arts has always been his strength, and ultimately he gave himself over to the arts full time in 2012 – as a visual artist, a writer, and a songwriting recording artist – and it is all he has been doing since.

          As a person who has suffered from a persistent case of manic depression in the past, Jeff has seen the mental health system up close and has gained a lot of valuable knowledge and experience. Finally, after finding successful treatment and coming to full health in the summer of 2000, Jeff made the decision in 2001 to become an independent public advocate for mental health and illness issues. He has made presentations to nursing classes, residents, and a variety of national conferences; and at the request of Deputy Chief Joe Brown of the RNC, he spoke to the entire command staff.

          Today, Jeff Kelland is 62 years old, and he remains a lifelong student of the human condition. Fascinated with how and why things are as they are, he possesses a genuine concern for the welfare of his fellow human beings. His first book, Grace Ungiven (and the innocents left to yearn), has just been released, and he is more than half finished his next novel. And now, with his new A Branch of the Arts website up and open for business, he is ready to spend the rest of his life creating his art and promoting/marketing it to the world.