Is seeking comfort in art foolish? Last week I had the pleasure of viewing the inaugural solo exhibition of Louisiana-based painter Kathryn Keller at Gallery 71 on the upper east side. It was a grey and drizzling day in May, the clouds heavy with condensation and the pavement slick with moisture. I popped into the gallery and introduced myself to the young woman at the front desk, whose ear to ear grin made me feel like seeking comfort in Art was a solidly moral choice. She happened to be the daughter of gallery owner Alfred Gonzalez, a photographer and native of ‘El Barrio’ Spanish Harlem.
Illuminated by several street-facing windows, inside the unpretentious gallery felt cozy, almost like entering a secret room filled with treasure. Paintings hung in all the appropriate places, several displayed prominently with big red dots indicating ‘SOLD,’ others hung discreetly behind the reception, or faced outwards so that passersby on the street could steal a glimpse. Whether painting clusters of seaside rocks nestling into the sand off the coast of Maine or one of New York City’s lesser-known landmarks, the works in the show achieve resonance through steady progression. Without catering to the art world’s insatiable need for novelty, Keller is an American painter best known for her works from life, particularly Louisiana landscapes she crafts from rural Louisiana and enchanting interiors of magical homes. While her early work was narrative in content (ensconced in myth, family life, birth and death) the past thirty years of her practice reflects a nearly exclusive emphasis on landscape, cityscapes and interiors. It’s no wonder collectors are calling Kathryn Keller’s work ‘familiar,’ as despite the show’s evidence of the artist’s rather nomadic lifestyle, her work has an auspiciously spacious permanence.
Whether rendering a big sturdy tree trunk and the wildness of its limbs, or zeroing in on a New York landmark with the figures blurred to obscurity, each work achieves a semblance of realism with a dash of centering restraint. For viewers, it’s as if each canvas hits a nerve of recollection with respect to space and place. As if the artist’s deeply personal feeling relationship with the land imbues the canvas with sensory optics common to humanity. Keller is one of the latest additions to the roster of artists represented by Gallery 71, what over 30 years has become a small and important oasis for paintings by realists and an Upper East Side landmark in its own right. It’s quite a fitting partnership given the gallery’s emphasis on works of art showcasing New York City’s historic landmarks and architecture, including the pastoral slopes of the neighboringCentral Park. Kathryn Keller’s dreamy renderings of our city’s many iconic destinations read like a graphic novella in pictorial form, minus the plot twists and spice. And yet, her artistic vision is hardly narrative or even contained, but rather, roves like a placeless, buxom canopy of clouds.
A multivalent présentation of three distinct bodies of work, “Capturing What is Ever Changing,” straddles various locales. The first of the two series depict Keller’s eyes roving over rural, central Louisiana, the second over magical seascapes and buildings of Nova Scotia and the rugged coastline of Maine. Rounding out the artist’s fascination with the organic tendrils of life, Keller’s final fleet of ethereal watercolors depict the ever-evolving cityscapes of NYC. While each individual work of this set feels imbued with aesthetic, cultural and historical meaning – the recent upsurge in interest in Keller’s work surely boils down to its sense of timelessness and simplicity. Without needing to push buttons or the genre boundaries, Keller quietly centers herself in the mysterious continuum connecting eye to hand and head to heart.
In “SKY BRIDGE” (2024) Keller’s 16 x 12 inches. Watercolor On Paper, the artist highlights our city’s dwindling prevalence of those aerial passageways which connect two buildings over a bustling street. Harkening back to a time when everyone expected Manhattan’s thoroughfare to pierce the heavens in stride with its tallest skyscrapers, today sky bridges feel more like anachronism than innovation. With many of them bulldozed to make way for luxury towers, it’s likewise a characteristic feature of New York worth bookmarking with Keller’s always elegant impressions. It’s certainly one which brings a little whimsy and magic to even the most enormous, block-sprawling complex. In “THE FOG BECOMES A FRIEND” (2023) Keller’s 16 x 20 inches Oil on Canvas, much of the opposite aesthetic criterion is emphasized. In and through the friendly fog emerges a sublime albeit porous force of affection; an impression of bonds made with forces of nature that softly engulf, reminding us we are only as flush with the breadth of life as we want to be.
In the age of flickering non-sense and deep divides on the brink of all-systems collapse, it doesn’t hurt to imagine Keller, tirelessly at work, progressing through a feeble memory, a humble gesture emblazoned on canvas and built to stand the test of time. As the title of the exhibition suggests, the only inevitable thing is change. In a world that is now more than ever in precarious flux, Keller’s common thread finds continuity in the inconclusive, in submission to an unknowable grace.
Born in mid 20th century El Dorado, Arkansas, after completing her undergraduate studies in Fine Art and English, Keller would spend many more years perfecting her trade, including undergoing tutelage at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts and in New York City a Art Students League of New York. Having become well-known in the south for her landscapes of rural Louisiana, Keller’s paintings are increasingly sought after, being included in twelve permanent museum collections nation-wide.
Follow the artist on Instagram @kathryn_keller_art @Gallery71NYC
“Capturing What is Ever Changing” is on view at Gallery 71 May 1st – 31st, 2025
974 Lexington Avenue, @ 71st Street New York, NY 10021
Monday-Friday 10am-6pm & Saturday 10am-5pm, walk-ins welcome*
