Keith Wilson

THE SHAPE OF COLOR, SOLO EXHIBIT AT THE SEA RANCH LODGE JAN 4-FEB 28 2024

The North Coast area provides an artist with a multitude of inspirational natural resources to use as painting subjects. However, I find that it inspires me to explore more abstracted relationships between colors, organic lines, irregular shapes and blocks.

In my experience, nature is best revealed and appreciated by viewing it as a dynamic living experience. The resultant takeaway is a memo of light and wind and fog on the rocks and forests that I reference consistently to generate oil paintings that hopefully will enliven homes and enrich the occupants when the natural world is out of reach or access is restricted by weather or darkness.

For me, painting is the interface or intermediate zone between the natural environment and the constructed world. The choice to focus on one or the other as a subject or inspiration is personal and not absolute. My education and practice as an architect for many years taught me critical observation and rigorous form giving abilities which I translate to a painted surface.

The paintings are constructed as they are being painted often with palette knives instead of brushes. The thick paint retains tool marks and the rough edges between colors is emphasized.

The color block paintings currently being produced are narrative neutral consisting of simple color/shapes on linen that play out parallel relationships distilled from a critical view of the built environment and from the ethereal spaces experienced in nature.

Keith Wilson’s early paintings are icons; they are dedicated to an architecture that is no longer conceived or constructed.  They also represent his continuous study of architectural form and the history of the place of buildings in paintings.  He uses building structures and details in juxtaposition, allowing classical elements and vernacular constructions to reveal themselves, proliferating variations.  His color is similarly the product of memory, imagination, and intuitive application inspired by the painted buildings observed in Italy and Greece. The tall buildings were part of a series of "The Skyscraper Artistically Considered" paintings and reflect on his time in the Building Design section of SOM Architects, SF mid-1980's.

READ MORE ON: CONVERSATION 9.A Private Architecture Series

Fifteen years after discontinuing the practice of architecture, building plans have drifted into my paintings.

Thickened lines recalling walls and openings establish the enclosure of spaces and framing of light and views and establish the metrics of habitation and containment. Additional forms and marks are present,  defining the site and addressing the placement of buildings and ancillary structures.

Architectural plan elements complicate the effort to seek purity in the paintings. They produce a readable, scalable event and a reference to dimensional habitable space. They assign a degree function to paintings which are resigned to being without purpose or actual usefulness.

The suggestion of building plans and site improvements in a non-objective painting directly violated the concept of abstraction in a real and symbolic fashion.

Meanwhile the elements of building plans have entered into my paintings possible as a reference to my previous profession or perhaps as nostalgia for a fading and disappearing mode of communication and construction. WTF.

This collection of more than 50 paintings was exhibited recently as a solo exhibit entitled "The Building Plan Artistically Considered" as a reference to the late 19th century essay by Louis Sullivan.

READ MORE ON: CONVERSATION 4.Painted Buildings

These loosely painted sumi-ink/watercolor sketches are an immediate and pre-conceptual communication with observed and remembered natural formations and phenomena. The study of Carl Gustav Carus, Chinese landscape paintings, Taoist writings, travel in Japan and China, and time spent in Kauai and the Sierra Nevada mountains provided a continual source of inspiration. In addition to mountain studies I painted an extended series of "Meadow Studies" inspired by our meadow at Sea Ranch. This body of work produced from 2002 to 2009 includes more that 500 paintings on paper. 

READ MORE ON: CONVERSATION 7.Abstract Landscapes

Upon completion of the large oil painting, FOREST HOUSES, I selected a number of focused passages that were singled out and repainted as simple and direct impasto detail paintings. This process of discovery and reworking of the selected crops freed me from the constraints of re-establishing shapes, design and color selection. I was able to concentrate on precise color mixing and application which was accomplished with a collection of palette knives. The group of resulting details .01-.06 share similar abstracted references to the elements of houses and buildings that are partially observable among the trees and breaks in the Sea Ranch fogs. They are further informed by the colors of the verdant forests, sky, ocean and sunsets. Keith Wilson, June 2020

SQUARE DEAL series.

A square painting support has always presented special challenges due to the primary inherent geometry which is both static and familiar. This series plays with these constraints by breaking and dividing the space irregularity and making it more dynamic and energetic. The square shape is centered by nature of its equilateral shape but with the introduction of rouge vectors and discordant color combinations the center focus is replaced by action induced noise and visual dismemberment establishing a chaotic environment, resolved by asymmetrical balance and irregular counter movements. Although there is minimal evidence of recognizable elements there are imbedded simple shapes that reference buildings and natural forms.

The strong black frame acts as a containment facility to define the boundary of the painting and reinforce the squareness of the square that the irregular painted shapes set out to defile.

Conflict and resolution; a yin/yang intervention exercise for the mind and eye.

I was a watercolor painter for over 35 years but I began painting with oil about ten years ago after viewing the Gerhard Richter exhibit at SFMOMA. I have no stylistic connection with his work but upon carefully observing his masterful use of oil paint I realize that I needed to change medium in order to increase the scale, presence and viability of my work if I was going to move forward and grow as a painter.  It was a surprisingly difficult transition with all of my initial goals of simply translating my watercolors into oil paintings largely un-realizable to my satisfaction. I did however develop an unrelated direction that hopefully has the potential to produce substantive paintings.

READ MORE ON: CONVERSATION 8.Larger Oil Paintings 

This continuing series of oil paintings are often generated by left-handed drawings that are non-referential but informed by natural forms and remembered spaces. Through an ongoing process of editing and modification they eventually morph into a cohesive organization of shapes.

The primary act of drawing on paper energizes this current series. The provided structure is an armature that can be transformed into an edge, shape or remain an enhanced linear element.

Dense color blocks are interlocked with transparent amorphous cascading shapes all generated by the initial fugitive vine charcoal marks. The dominance of the line recedes as it is merged with the paint and amplifies the edges of the pictorial elements.

Similar to the PURE PAINTINGS, the painting alone is the subject/object. However, unintended visual elements have emerged, often upon rotation, producing partially recognizable features or objects to some.

These works are thinned oil paint on Arches Oil Prepared paper mounted on cradled panels. The sizes are mostly 12”x16” and 9”x12”.

READ MORE ON: CONVERSATION 3.Painted Drawings

This extended series of paintings started from a simple brush-out of color on a scrap of linen. My primary interest is to create a series of Pure Paintings which develop from a directed focus and response to the support, pigments and tools. I am attempting to create paintings that are embedded with a familiar aura or mnemonic coding but are narrative neutral, self contained and free from reference to commercial, social or manufactured influences.

READ MORE ON: CONVERSATION 1.Pure Painting Series

Arun Patel, a photographer, and Keith Wilson, a painter, have long shared an intense common interest in the nature of nature and sublime beauty by producing artwork as an informed response to the non-artificial environment. The exhibition, “Combining Forces”, will include a selection of their existing individual observations but will feature collaborations which they produced in the creation of unique jointly-created artworks. Included will be works that feature both artists interpreting the same scene and/or both artists’ work presented on the same paper through digital merging and fusing.

The North Coast has been a continual inspiration for these artists, and this exhibit will provide a close up view of the unknown details and phenomena which make it a unique place to live. Through years of intense study of Japanese aesthetics and Chinese painting traditions coupled with extensive travel in rural Japan and China, a framework for experiencing the North Coast shore, meadows and forest zones has guided them.