There is a lot of superb contemporary realism being made these days; this article by Peter Trippi shines light on a gifted individual.
KATE KEERY (b. 1998) creates luminous oil and acrylic paintings in her Brooklyn studio, though she was born and raised in Newburyport, Massachusetts, 40 miles north of Boston. She has been interested in art-making as long as she can remember, and credits a Montessori elementary school for fostering her creativity. During high school, she studied privately with local painter Susan Kneeland, and ultimately chose to pursue an undergraduate degree at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
The decision to go there was fraught: having first been admitted to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she recalls believing “that a career in the arts would not allow me to have a stable or successful life. I feared that it would lead me to hating the craft, and that I would regret having taken such a decisive path so early in life.” So Keery arrived at UMass planning to major in environmental studies; having grown up on the coast, she hoped “to protect the very environment that had shaped who I am.” Fascinating as science classes were, “they never came as easily as those in art did,” and by her second semester she added studio art as a minor.
Keery later completed that minor’s requirements during five happy months at Florence University of the Arts (part of the American University of Florence). There she not only burnished her technical skills while studying anatomy and art therapy, but also came to admire the “open and boisterous love that Florentines express for one another, especially their family members.” That capacity to “express connection” through everyday human interaction features in Keery’s imagery today, which foregrounds what she calls the “beauty, intimacy, and magic in insignificant, often unnoticed moments.”
Many scenes are set by the sea, where sunlight glinting off the water brings back memories of her childhood spent on the coast with family and friends. She adds that what draws her to these settings is how “people let their guard down while swimming or lying on the beach. It’s almost as if the environment itself extracts the most authentic version of oneself and reinforces the inner child.” Earlier in her career, Keery often painted unpopulated landscapes, but now she prefers showing people occupying those spaces, and clearly her collectors approve.
Keery generally works from photographs that she has taken with her point-and-shoot film camera or iPhone, some of which she then edits in Photoshop. Consulting the image on her computer screen, she proceeds to transform it into a painting humming with energy, atmosphere, and glow. “Over time,” she notes, “I’ve become a much looser painter, which breathes life into the work.” This spring she has been revisiting photographs taken before the iPhone arrived, scavenging through old photo albums in her childhood home.
Connect with the artist at www.keeryfineart.com.
This article was originally published in Fine Art Connoisseur magazine (subscribe here). Prepared for the web by Cherie Dawn Haas, Editor of Realism Today
