Steve Keene (born 1957) is an American painter known as a prolific creator of affordable art.

Early life and education

Originally from

Charlottesville Charlottesville, colloquially known as C'ville, is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is the county seat of Albemarle County, which surrounds the city, though the two are separate legal entities. It is named after Queen Ch ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

, Keene earned a BFA from

Virginia Commonwealth University Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) is a public research university in Richmond, Virginia. VCU was founded in 1838 as the medical department of Hampden–Sydney College, becoming the Medical College of Virginia in 1854. In 1968, the Virginia ...

and a MFA from

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

Career

When Keene was a volunteer DJ at the college radio station WTJU in Charlottesville, Virginia in the 1990s, he became friends with musician David Berman and future members of the band Pavement, and seeing them hustle to sell CDs and merchandise shaped his approach to producing and selling art. According to the bio on his webpage, Keene said, "I want buying my paintings to be like buying a CD: it’s cheap, it's art and it changes your life, but the object has no status. Musicians create something for the moment, something with no boundaries and that kind of expansiveness is what I want to come across in my work." Described as the "assembly-line Picasso" by ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...

'', Keene's approach is to paint quickly, lining up plywood panels and painting the same image on each. By this method, he reportedly uses around "five gallons of paint a week and 100 sheets of 4-by-8-foot plywood, which he cuts up into 'canvases,' every month." Not finding interest from galleries, he began selling his work at rock shows. He purposely kept the price of the work inexpensive, he said, "so that people would buy them, and I wouldn't have to take them back home." In addition to selling pieces by quantity on his website, he has created album art, video sets, stage sets, and posters for bands including

Silver Jews Silver Jews were an American indie rock band from New York City, formed in 1989 by David Berman alongside Pavement members Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastanovich. Berman was the only constant band member. During the last few albums, Cassie Berman ...

, Pavement,

The Apples in Stereo The Apples in Stereo, styled as The Apples in stereo, are an American pop/rock band associated with Elephant 6 Collective, a group of bands also including Neutral Milk Hotel, The Olivia Tremor Control, Elf Power, Of Montreal, and Circulatory S ...

Soul Coughing Soul Coughing was an American alternative rock band composed of vocalist/guitarist Mike Doughty (also known as M. Doughty), keyboardist/sampler Mark Degli Antoni, bassist Sebastian Steinberg, and drummer Yuval Gabay. Soul Coughing developed a d ...

The Klezmatics The Klezmatics are an American klezmer music group based in New York City, who have achieved fame singing in several languages, most notably mixing older Yiddish tunes with other types of more contemporary music of differing origins. They have ...

, and

Dave Matthews Band Dave Matthews Band (also known by the initials DMB) is an American rock band formed in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1991. The band's founding members were singer-songwriter and guitarist Dave Matthews, bassist Stefan Lessard, drummer and bac ...

. Keene has painted live as part of exhibitions and residencies across the country. In November 1997 he "worked in the window of the Goldie Paley Gallery at the Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia." He painted more than 10,000 pieces as part of the exhibition "The Miracle Half-Mile" at the

Santa Monica Museum of Art The Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA), formerly known as the Santa Monica Museum of Art (SMMoA), is a contemporary art museum in Los Angeles, CA. As an independent and non-collecting art museum (or kunsthalle), it exhibits the ...

, and then did another painting residency at the museum in August 2011. The Brooklyn Public Library named Keene its 2014 Artist-in-Residence, for which he exhibited "Steve Keene’s Brooklyn Experience" in the Central Library's Grand Lobby, led art workshops for children, and painted live outside of the Central Library for several weekends during the summer. To honor Keene during the Library residency,

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

Borough President

Eric Adams Eric Leroy Adams (born September 1, 1960) is an American politician and retired police captain serving as the 110th mayor of New York City since January 1, 2022. Adams was an officer in the New York City Transit Police and then the New York ...

declared June 14, 2014 as Steve Keene Day. His work has also been exhibited internationally in England, Germany, and Australia, and has been on display in two of David Chang's restaurants. As of 2021, Keene estimates he has sold or given away more than 300,000 paintings.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Keene, Steve 20th-century American painters American male painters 21st-century American painters 21st-century American male artists Living people 1957 births Yale University alumni 20th-century American male artists