ON GOLDEN LIGHT

New York painter Brian Keeler paints the land with an emotional connection to light and form.

- JOHN O' HERN

When he was 15, Brian Keeler won a canoe race on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania where he frequently paddled with family and friends. Today, he documents the Susquehanna and the Finger Lakes just north of the New York border in paintings filled with the light and color of the region.

He often paints in the late afternoon Golden Hour, observing, “As I often do the out-of-doors painting late in the day because of my attraction to the heightened drama of raking light, a number of these works show the sun glinting on the lakes or glowing through trees etc. Others…are entirely painted in the studio but certainly based on impressions and studies from the motif. The play of light as it describes the form and character of the land or figure and brings out various qualities has long been of interest to me….” He often begins his paintings in plein air, as he says, capturing the fleeting light but “sticking to it as it changes.” Painting outdoors, he feels an emotional attachment to the scene from its smells, the feel of the air and the ambient sounds.

Approaching a canvas, he believes that even one line should create “some kind of interesting division of the space.” He creates the eye level a third of the way down from the top of the canvas which gives him the opportunity to emphasize the sky. He begins painting broadly and gesturally, going from broad generalizations to being more defined.