About Keith
Bio
Painter of landscapes and various odds and ends.
Works primarily in acrylics.
Born in Houston, Texas
​BFA from Sam Houston State University
Lives in Tomball, Texas with his wife and two dogs.
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Artist's Statement
Inspiration:
The Roy Neary Syndrome
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In “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” Richard Dreyfuss’s character, Roy Neary, has the image of the Devil’s Tower implanted in his mind by visiting space aliens. He immediately becomes obsessed with the image and it consumes his every waking moment. He turns to sculpture in order to fulfill his desire to bring the image to life, and utilizes various mediums from mashed potatoes to mud in the process.
A similar, but far less alien, thing happens to me as well. I will see something in the landscape that grabs me—it could be a barren hill, a fuzzy horizon, a nondescript bush—and I won’t be able to stop thinking about it until I’ve attempted to recreate it on the canvas. I can sometimes hold two or three of these types of powerful images in my head, but I spend a lot of time thinking through how they will be realized. This is what I call the Roy Neary Syndrome.
Vision:
The Exalted Image
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The powerful image burning a hole in my head quickly becomes something more than just an image. I begin to see it as something elevated in stature and importance. I begin to imbue it with religious qualities similar to that of an altar piece. It becomes something I wish to stand in front of and have a revelation or epiphany. To be clear, I am not a religious person—certainly not in the traditional sense. I do, however, understand the power of imagery to convey a sense of the numinous or transcendent. It might be no surprise that my favorite movie is 2001 a Space Odyssey. The monolith is seen as a religious symbol, a godlike device that enlightens the ignorant and transports the curious to other dimensions. No clear religious symbolism is needed to experience this transcendence. The monolith is solid black. It reflects no light. Yet its imposing stature is unavoidable. You don’t look at it. You see through it.
The artists who have had the greatest impact on me achieve a similar condition with their non-representational work—Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, and Lee Bontecou. Rothko’s work can overwhelm me if I happen to come across it unexpectedly in a museum. It’s like the monolith from 2001. Rothko was aware of the power of his imagery to move people to tears. The strongest example of this is the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas. The octagonal, non-denominational chapel contains 14 of Rothko’s paintings, all giants in scale and all painted in dark hues of black, purple, and maroon. Being born and raised in Houston, I have had the good fortune to visit the chapel many times. (Side note: I find it interesting that Rothko’s chapel paintings and 2001 were all created during the same time period in the middle 1960s. It seems there was a convergence of ideas in post-painterly abstraction and minimalism which led to similar solutions for Kubrick and Rothko)
I’m not interested in pretty pictures. I’m interested in compelling imagery that can become paintings. I prefer flat, straight-on perspectives, with a tendency towards a more centered composition and less of an oblique one. Lights and darks are the most important thing for me. Color is arbitrary. As the old saying goes, “Value does all the work and color gets all the credit.”
Process:
Paint Like You Sketch
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My penchant for the power of abstraction is seemingly at odds with my choice to pursue representational imagery as my dominant approach to painting. I do create abstract works, and for me they are the most difficult things to paint. The difficulty with abstraction lies in the vision behind the work, not the process. The vision for abstracts comes from within and can be an elusive thing to grab hold of. However, the abstract painting process is one of complete freedom, exploration, and play.
With representational painting, I find that the difficulty lies more in execution than the idea. The challenge involves making the right choices of stroke quality, value, color, and placement to do justice to the reference material. If I find myself struggling for too long with any of those things, it is usually because I have lost my enthusiasm for the image or composition. In other words, my heart is no longer in it.
The term “language of art” is often used to describe the compositional tools used in creating the painting. When I approach a painting, my goal is to speak that language to tell a story, but not a complete story. Like my favorite literature, I prefer stories that are often incomplete or mysterious. This allows the viewer to make their own assumptions and read what they want into the work. I may have a specific idea or motif I want to convey, but I like to leave room for interpretation.
I prefer a painterly approach to my work. I am not one to fall down the rabbit hole of detail and description. The last thing I want is to cross that bridge from painting into illustration. Too much detail equals too much information, which in turn equals too much storytelling. I want the gist of it to come across, a suggestion of something, a doorway not a path.
One of my painting professors, Harry Ahysen, would always tell us to “paint like you sketch.” It’s a loaded statement containing a nod to the painterly approach. It can be interpreted in many ways beginning with the fact that no two people sketch exactly in the same manner. Painting like you sketch might yield a loose, brushy painting for some but could just as well result in a tighter, more refined work. Regardless, the true idea of “painting like you sketch” is that it forces you to paint as yourself. The process automatically prevents one from falling into the trap of style or trend. It is one of the key ideas I continue to remind myself every time I step in front of the canvas.