My work contrasts rational, conceptual processes with intuitive inquiry. I research, investigate, and shape materials using chance, accident, and random samplings, as well as imagery from the canon of art history. I am driven to create work that is richly layered, that feels expressive, measured, and substantial.
I have been employing manipulated wire grids. The wire grids are cut to create stencils for my mark making. Along with the wire drawings I have built a series of shapes based on the design technique of camouflage. These camouflage shapes are created from overlapped lines that are an accumulation of tracings from the canon of western painting. Shapes are interspersed with marks to create levels and a sense of motion and chaos in my paintings and prints.
My work speaks directly to my world, marks and shapes are broken from a strict order; tumbling over; blocking; competing for space. The crowding marks and shapes reflect the shifting world as systems and beliefs shred and burst into new compilations. There are bits of the familiar but those are hints and allusions. I am not looking to create an order. I am recording a moment of being.
Anne Q. McKeown is an artist whose practice includes painting, printmaking and handmade paper. McKeown has traveled to and worked in Egypt, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Cuba and South Africa. She has worked with artists at the Artist Proof Studio and Phumani Paper in Johannesburg, South Africa. McKeown has spoken on art discussion panels, including an interview with Richard Tuttle at the New York Editions and Artist Book Fair 2008, she has juried exhibitions, including the 2007 Philagrafika Invitational Portfolio, and has presented her work as a visiting artist at various Universities, including the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.
McKeown has taught Art Appreciation and Drawing courses at the University of Connecticut in Stamford and Papermaking at Mason Gross School of the Arts; as well as many workshops and demonstrations, including the 2010 Pulp Painting Symposium at the Southwest School of Art in San Antonio, Texas. Since 2001 she has been the Master Papermaker at the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions. McKeown holds her B.A in Studio Art, 1992 from Skidmore College and her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University School of Art. Over the last three years her work has been shown at the SOHO20 CHELSEA Gallery, New York where she is a Fellowship member. She has shown at the Hall of Awa in Yamakawa, Japan JARFO Gallery in Kyoto, Japan; at Rupert Ravens Contemporary and Gallery Aferro in Newark, NJ, at the Noyes Museum in Oceanville, NJ and the Hogar Collection Gallery in Brooklyn, NY among others. Her work involves exploration, working with painting, printmaking, papermaking and wire drawings. She makes and takes apart systems using color, chance and intuition.