My artwork often uses architectural forms as subject matter. Inspired by the biblical story of the tower of Babel, I am drawn to structures that are collapsed, abandoned, or under construction.

The use of hard edged angular forms reflect a desire for order, control and certainty in life. However, their entangled and precarious condition suggests disorder, fragility, tentativeness, confusion and doubt.

To communicate the epochal tensions present in the vacillation between order and disorder, these forms are cast in dramatic chiaroscuro or colored light. As in many of romanticism’s great history and landscape paintings, light becomes the vehicle to direct the viewer toward the transcendent, the sublime and the presence of Divinity: “The light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”

This tension is further presented in the contrast between representational painting and the graphic, flat, or abstracted elements within each work.

Through my artwork, I seek to communicate that beauty, faith, hope and contentment can exist in life even when one’s support structures are weakened, confused, collapsing, being rebuilt — or being built up for the very first time.

                                                                          Donald Keefe // 2017 

© 2009 - 2020
  Donald Keefe