Zachary Keeting’s Discoveries

Zachary Keeting

To stand next to an artist who is turning one sheet after another of just finished work produces something akin to what astronomers must experience with each new image from the Hubbell telescope. The imagined universe and the real one are both full of surprises. And you have to constantly rethink their dimensions.

When I first saw Zachary Keeting’s work some three years ago, it was clear that he was making his way through a number of experiments toward his own certain voice. There was a sense of form and color at each other’s throats, competing for dominance. But this was no futile struggle.

It is clear from his most recent painting that both have won, and been transformed by the mutual triumph. A residency early this year at the Yaddo artists’ community in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., has done what the dream of such intermissions is – granted the artist the freedom to take the next step. These works of acrylic applied to paper loosen and burgeon across the surface, forming archipelagos of color that still appear to be shifting shape, often within flailing strings of silver or gold.

The energy from previous combats is still here, transmitted in single, continuous strokes of a brush out of a Japanese calligrapher’s dream. There are alphabets galore, some with the precise curvature of Hebrew letters, others like the partly visible remains of of an illuminated manuscript scraped from its parchment. Layers of paint seem as if they have been lifted away, producing a transparency that redefines the illusion of three dimensional perspective on a flat plane.

Keeting will make more discoveries, no doubt. But there is no need for collectors to wait, given what he has already found.

Additional images, and contact information for the artist, are here.