My artwork seeks to express feelings of uncertainty and hope. I attempt to convey this through the visual tensions between hard edged regular forms such as blocks, and their disordered arrangement. This tension is heightened through various lighting and color schemes, as well as how the work relates to drawing and painting, or representation and abstraction as distinct disciplines.The work often uses architectural forms as subject matter with occasional additions of figurative elements.
Inspired by the biblical story of the tower of Babel, I am drawn to structures that are collapsed, abandoned, or under construction as symbols for hubris, failure, and the persistence to 'try again' in life. Sometimes I compare or contrast these structures to forms I associate with my personal search for spiritual faith, hope and purpose. These forms could be abandoned ruins, mysterious rock formations of the American Southwest, the great Catholic churches of Europe, or references to my jewish family background.
The use of hard edged angular forms in my paintings 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 gray subdued colors as if in a fog, dramatic chiaroscuro or unnatural 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.
I consider these artworks autobiographical but, in a way, they are also a vehicle of self-suppression. While in the studio I listen to audiobooks of history, philosophy, art, and religion. Although I’m a musician I rarely listen to music while working. I’d rather learn an obscure bit of history while focusing on making a straight level line than be distracted by thoughts of self, or memories of failures and personal losses. The architectural forms, the landscape, the contrasts between light and shadow, are all parts of myself reinterpreted in impersonal, academic, or even formalist terms. For me, art making is part of a ‘born again’ experience, free of the burden of personal shame and guilt.
Through my artwork, I hope to communicate to viewers that beauty, faith, hope and contentment can persist through the uncertainties of life, even when one’s support structures are weakened, confused, collapsing, being rebuilt — or being built up for the very first time.
- Donald Keefe
© 2009 - 2020
Donald Keefe
Donald Keefe
