Warren Keating
San Jose, New Mexico
Artist Warren Keating captures the motion of walking figures and conveys the immediacy of fleeting moments in his artwork. He documents his subjects on video through birds-eye views, translating their details with oil paint using an approach he describes as Pixel Impressionism. His inspiration for this series came from a Paris vacation, where he photographed passersby from his hotel balcony in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. “My art captures the imagination by looking fairly photo-realistic at a distance but very expressive, abstract, and gestural up close,” says Warren. He works in a spacious, slightly cluttered studio with plenty of natural light, conveniently located next to his house in Santa Fe. Outside his creative pursuits, Warren enjoys spending time with family, engaging in outdoor activities, and traveling to gather new life experiences and future references for his compositions. His paintings have earned features on CNN, the LA Times, and the Huffington Post.
Artist Statement
My Overview series results from collecting videos of unwitting subjects from balconies, rooftops, and bridges and painting them on canvas, resulting in a unique style I refer to as Pixelated Impressionism.
I draw inspiration from a rich artistic heritage, blending 20th-century elements like abstract naturalism, expressive realism, and narrative painting with the technological marvels of the 21st century—digitized video, satellite surveillance, and internet voyeurism. The outcome is a collection of artworks that showcase the organic forms of figures, expertly foreshortened and dynamically connected to their urban surroundings.
Incorporating my childhood experience with a disease that left me unable to walk for several years, I obsessively combine video and paint to create overhead views of walking people captured on canvas, stop-action, mid-step in thick paint. I painstakingly select the exact frame of video that tells each character's story and render the digital nature of each image in a painterly style, depicting a privileged view of a private moment.
The motion of these subjects is realized in thick paint as video scan lines and pixel artifacts create a style of mark-making that has never been seen before.
I draw inspiration from a rich artistic heritage, blending 20th-century elements like abstract naturalism, expressive realism, and narrative painting with the technological marvels of the 21st century—digitized video, satellite surveillance, and internet voyeurism. The outcome is a collection of artworks that showcase the organic forms of figures, expertly foreshortened and dynamically connected to their urban surroundings.
Incorporating my childhood experience with a disease that left me unable to walk for several years, I obsessively combine video and paint to create overhead views of walking people captured on canvas, stop-action, mid-step in thick paint. I painstakingly select the exact frame of video that tells each character's story and render the digital nature of each image in a painterly style, depicting a privileged view of a private moment.
The motion of these subjects is realized in thick paint as video scan lines and pixel artifacts create a style of mark-making that has never been seen before.
Artist Background
Otis College of Art and Design
Bachelor of Arts, 1989