Culture
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MOMENTS AT INGLEWOOD
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BOOZY BOOKSHOP
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LAFAYETTE
EMERGING // 4 1
CHRONICLES OF CAJUN
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ON EXHIBIT
Beautiful Isolation
KATHRYN KELLER’S INTIMATE RENDERINGS ARE AS UNIVERSAL AS EVER By Jordan LaHaye Fontenot
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Top right: “Lake Fausse Point 3.10.2020” (2020), watercolor on paper, 16x12 inches. Top left: “Bleak House 2.19.2020,” watercolor on paper, 12x9 inches. Bottom: “Bleak House 11.17.19,” watercolor on paper, 20x14 inches. All by Kathryn Keller.
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t’s difficult to pinpoint what it is about Kathryn Keller’s paintings that so echo the real. Far from photorealist works, her paintings—cozy corners by the fireplace, peeks through doorways, expansive bayous shrouded by oaks and reflected into a passing stream—live very definitely in the realm of the second dimension, and upon a closer look might even be considered in some sense abstract with their wispy, conspicuous brushstrokes. And yet, Keller’s visions possess an inherent quality of materiality, of truth. Perhaps it is her use of color— shading an entire room with a satsuma gleam you don’t have to
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be told is not the wallpaper, but instead sunlight pouring through the windowpanes. Maybe it’s Keller’s clever, perhaps even playful, use of reflection: in tepid bathwater, against the gloss of the dining table or the baby grand. It could be the human essences secreted into her anywhere, anytime interiors: blankets crumpled in the corners, books left opened on her ottomans, paintings you can barely make out on every wall, and the January 23, 2017 issue of the New Yorker, with Barry Blitt’s rendering of America’s fortyfifth president in a car smaller than his head, left on a countertop. But more likely, it is the familiarity emanating from Kathryn Keller’s paintings that gives them life—the sense that I, the viewer, have been here before. This universality speaks perhaps more deeply to Keller’s ability to evoke a shared experience than it does to her (albeit masterful) representational skills. In a 2017 interview with her daughter, multimedia artist Hannah Timmons, Keller said that she is not motivated by the mission of accurate
representation: “When I’m painting the landscape or interiors, it’s because I’m painting where I am. It’s as simple as that for me. Hopefully by capturing the uniqueness of the place, by describing a specific place well, it will begin to resonate and feel universal.” “There is the artist who is conceptually thinking about what they are creating,” explained Keller’s godson David Gunderson Weissman. “Then there is the artist who just creates because they need to do so everyday. Like eating or sleeping, it’s what they need to do. There is no set agenda behind why the create. Kathryn wakes up and tackles whatever surrounds her,” he said. “She paints, every single day, because she must.” “Kathryn paints all the time,” said Catherine Pears at the Alexandria Museum of Art, which displayed the artist’s debut exhibition The View From Within in 2017. “She doesn’t fly, takes the train to visit her family members, and she paints on the train. Everywhere, all the time, she paints.” Always painting from life, Keller’s body of work includes her varied travels. But it most prominently features Inglewood, the 1836 Alexandria farm purchased by her grandfather in 1926, where she spent much of her childhood. Today, Inglewood operates as the largest organic farm in Louisiana, run by Keller’s sister Elisabeth. It also serves as Kathryn’s full-time home these days, and her site of quarantine throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
“WHEN I BEGIN A PAINTING, HOW IMPOSSIBLE IT SEEMS. HOW DAUNTING A TASK. HOW AUDACIOUS THE ATTEMPT. I MUSTER MY COURAGE AND MY PATIENCE AND BEGIN THE ADVENTURE.” —KATHRYN KELLER
