Keith Grace

Each painting begins with sketches, often inspired by photographs that I have taken of friends, dogs and objects. These sketches evolve into the final composition which is enlarged and drawn onto canvas. I then collage individual, hand-torn pieces of typography, maps, comics, etc securely onto the surface with many layers of an adhesive, transparent medium to ensure a flat, seamless application. Next, I block in color with layers of acrylics. Detail painting is applied with oil colors, using a drybrush technique. This body of work revisits my days as a newspaper and book designer/illustrator. I’ve maintained the graphic quality of my earlier paintings but added the detailed collage work that is only seen and appreciated up close. This reinforces the reality that things are more interesting and complicated than they first appear. Mainstream news and social media tend to reduce everything to the lowest common denominator. My work opposes those generalizations.