Energized Confidence
The success of Keller’s first solo exhibition launched him into the very productive years of 1978-1981.
He was developing his unique style that defined him as the artist. He was riding on the emotional momentum generated by his show and was producing great works.
His hard work paid off in 1982 when he was selected to participate in the inaugural Triangle Artist’s Workshop in Pines Plains, New York. His confidence level enjoyed a major boost.
Triangle Experiences
The Triangle Workshop, conceived and overseen by British Sculptor Anthony Caro, was designed as on ongoing series of summer workshops that brought together professional artists in a working situation. The “Triangle” referred to the three geographic points, Edmonton, New York and London, that were perceived to be the centres of the most vital art-making activities.
Given the opportunity to work with some of the finest artists of his generation, Keller saw how his work measured up in a larger arena of art production.
The experiences of that summer had an extremely positive effect on Keller. He returned to his studio in Edmonton feeling inspired and energized. His paintings became more assured, more broadly conceived, and, in subtle ways, more daring.
The Triangle Workshop prompted a change in Keller’s stylistic approach that was tied to a new way of organizing his paintings.
At the Workshop, Keller started to loosen up his drawing, aligning it less to the horizontals and verticals of the picture support. Filling the paint surface more densely with paint, he started to explore again the possibilities of line, dragging the brush in long, wandering strokes that in some ways echoed the “spines” of earlier pieces.
The difference was that these “spines” seemed more inclined to follow their own course and were less obviously tied to the architecture of the paintings.
RADIATING GREY
1982
Acrylic on canvas
98.5 x 157.0 cm
Collection of The Edmonton Art Gallery,
purchased with funds donated by the
Women’s Society of the Edmonton Art Gallery
and matched by funds from the
Canadian Council Art Bank
photo: Eleanore Lazare
At this stage of his career, Keller tended to load the surfaces of his new works more or less uniformly with gel-thickened paint, allowing the texture and tonal drawing to work in concert to create the abstract image.
His painting, Radiating Grey, 1983, clearly illustrated this technique.
By the mid eighties, he had begun to exploit more imaginatively the physical qualities of the paint material. In individual paintings, he started to mix textural effects, combining the thick paint with watery floods of colour, for example, or setting heavily textured passages over top of thin stains.
For some time, Keller had been working with close valued, subtly nuanced colour. Now, because of the new handling, the colour takes on a more atmospheric effect, and the paintings start to “breathe” more openly. Without sacrificing physicality to illusion, Keller’s art works began to open up to a deeper space.
Keller’s paintings from 1985 to 1987 are characterized by this very free and imaginative use of material. In retrospect, this time period can be seen as one of his most productive periods.
The success of this approach is very mush dependent on the artist’s ability to creatively respond to what comes up in the process of working with the material. Keller always demonstrated a fascination and facility with the physical side of the paint medium. His interest naturally drew him farther in this direction.
MADRID
(1987)
Acrylic on canvas
119.0 x 244.8 cm
Black & white image courtesy of the Woltjen/Udell Gallery.
In the spring of 1987, Keller showed a small group of paintings in a solo exhibition at the Woltjen/Udell Gallery in Edmonton, Alberta. On the whole, the work was good; however one painting stood apart from the rest.
Called Madrid, 1987, this large horizontal picture with a rich, red-stained ground exemplified his improved technique. Over top of the ground, the artist laid sweeping strokes of gel-thickened grey and dark blue paint.
Keller often exploited contrasts of surface application with much success. With Madrid, Keller pressed the idea even further. He had accentuated the contrast between thick and thin by grouping the thick strokes over to one side of the painting. This left a broad expanse of flat, subtly modulated colour to balance the bold sweeps of grey and blue.
With its radical asymmetry and its simplicity, Madrid appeared audacious. Although at first it seemed too extreme to follow up in a useful way, it was, in fact, a watershed painting. It was a clarifying painting that allowed Keller to get at something fundamental in his art; it opened the door to his best work to that date.
What is unusual about Madrid was the way it was organized. It was almost as if Keller had taken his method of painting apart and reassembled its components in a less complicated, more expressively succinct process. By separating the think paint from the stained field, pushing the textured paint over to the side so that it only partly overlapped the ground, he could load the grounds with more visual information.
Now the ground became more than a passive background in the figure/ground relationship with the thicker paint. The modulations of tone and colour could read more as “figure” and thus participate in a more interactive way with the configuration of the thick paint.
The two components could be contrasted, both colouristically and in texture. This would create a complex effect, almost like a musical fugue, or theme and variation without sacrificing any clarity.