In 2009, Houston painter Cheryl Kelley scored a Harper's Magazine cover and caught the attention of the Bernarducci Meisel Gallery, co-owned by Louis K. Meisel and Frank Bernarducci, New York dealers who are the kingmakers of the photorealist movement. Kelley's successful debut in a four-person show this February at their West 57th Street space garnered her gallery representation. The Texas artist's road to Manhattan was paved with racing metal. Always an agile painter, her latest series — sexy, scintillating oil on aluminum panels starring American muscle cars of the 1960s and 1970s — landed her in the Bernarducci Meisel stable. Vroom, vroom. Shown, detail: Cheryl Kelley's Vintage Chrysler Imperial, 2010, at Bernarducci Meisel Gallery (represented in Texas by New Gallery/Thom Andriola, Houston)