Details:
① Artwork:
Esopus Archive Mystery Painting
You will receive a single unique painting selected at random from the Esopus archive. In 2017, Tod Lippy asked artist Steve Keene, known for his radically egalitarian practice, if he would consider creating an original painting for every premium subscriber of Esopus. Keene was game, and for nearly a month in the early fall of that year, he painted approximately 1200 artworks referencing a wide range of imagery.
Steve Keene has sold or given away approximately 300,000 artworks as of 2021, making him possibly the most prolific artist in history. While he may be best known for the iconic album covers he has created for alternative rock acts such as Pavement and Silver Jews, Keene’s hand-painted multiples can also be found in many private and public collections. His process of painting many versions of an image is intense and meditative—part performance art, part endurance contest—moving down each row and adding one paint color to each plywood canvas until he reaches the end and then returns to the beginning, continuing to paint with various colors until the artworks are completed.
Specs:
③ Artist:
Dubbed alternatively a “conceptual folk artist,” ”the Grandma Moses of Brooklyn,” or “an assembly-line Picasso” (by Time), Steve Keene has sold or given away approximately 300,000 artworks as of 2021, making him quite possibly the most prolific artist in history. While he may be best known for the iconic album covers he has created for alternative rock acts such as Pavement, Silver Jews, The Apples in Stereo, Soul Coughing, and The Klezmatics, his work—which he thinks of as an “endless painting with no boundaries”—can also be found in many private and public collections. Keene creates hand-painted multiples in his Greenpoint studio inside “the cage,” a large rectangle of tornado fencing he covers with pieces of plywood. His process of painting multiple versions of an image is intense and meditative—part performance art, part endurance contest—moving down each row and adding one paint color to each plywood canvas until he reaches the end. He then returns to the beginning, continuing to paint with various colors until the artworks are completed.
Steve Keene was born in 1957 in Charlottesville, VA, and lives in New York, NY. He earned his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA, and his MFA from Yale University in New Haven, CT.
Keene’s artworks have been exhibited in numerous venues, including Shepard Fairey’s Subliminal Projects, Los Angeles, CA; the Goethe Institute, Washington, D.C.; the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany; the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; the Tanks, Cairns, Australia; the Moore College of Art, Philadelphia, PA; and the Viewing Room at Marlborough Contemporary, Chelsea, New York.
In the summer of 2014, Keene was artist-in-residence for the Brooklyn Public Library. He gained recognition for his first official New York City show by performing a live painting exhibition on the Central Library Plaza three days a week for over three months.
Keene has been covered by National Public Radio, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Spin, and Filter, among many other media outlets.
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams named June 14, 2014, “Steve Keene Day” throughout the City of Brooklyn, where Keene lives and works.
You will receive a single unique painting selected at random from the Esopus archive. In 2017, Tod Lippy asked artist Steve Keene, known for his radically egalitarian practice, if he would consider creating an original painting for every premium subscriber of Esopus. Keene was game, and for nearly a month in the early fall of that year, he painted approximately 1200 artworks referencing a wide range of imagery.More
- Unframed
- Signed by artist
- You will receive a single unique painting selected at random from the Esopus archive. We have no control over which you'll receive, and neither do you.
