Tom Keessee
by David Tanner

“Take a small genuine pearl, dissolve it in lemon juice, dry the paste into a powder, mix it with egg white, let it harden, then grind and polish.”

- Leonardo da Vinci’s recipe for making artificial pearls.

Doing something halfway or part-time typically produces a result that is itself but half-baked. But for the well-regarded local painter Tom Keesee, working part-time has paid off in full.

The 50-year-old adjunct professor of art at the University of Saint Francis has quietly developed a gallery of admirers of his work created during the other half of his days during the past 23-odd years.

In the period before USF, the ingratiating Keesee worked for three different museums as an installation specialist, arranging, mounting and hanging exhibits. After earning his MFA from Miami University in Ohio, he launched this curious vocation at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (It was there that he first met his wife, Dee, a Fort Wayne native who managed the institution’s textile holdings.) After this initial stint, the couple moved out east to Purchase, New York where Tom found a similar position at the Newberger Museum, which is a part of the SUNY system.

Known widely for his accomplished prints in which he deftly renders nature scenes and landscapes, Keesee’s oil thickly impostoed landscapes are equally prized. His work has been featured at the university, the Allen County Public Library and at several private local and regional galleries, including Indianapolis. Three super-sized oil landscapes are scheduled to anchor Betty Fishman’s “Growing Up in Indiana” exhibition set for an August 20th opening at Artlink.

Born into a Crawfordsville family construction business, Keesee worked summers as a rough carpenter and, after graduating from the John Herron School of Art in Indianapolis with a BFA in 1977, he returned to the same work for two years before deciding to pursue a master’s degree.

“There’s no greater motivation to return to school than the day-after-day labors of construction,” Keesee recalled recently. “We’ve been fortunate to be able to have found work in our fields. We’re lucky too to be around other artists, and I totally enjoy working with the students.

“It’s fun and rewarding to watch them grow, whether they stay with printmaking, painting or something else. I’m not a Luddite but my tools - inks, acids, scribes, pigments and bristle brushes are associated with bygone years, not the high tech of computers. The print department here at USF is exceptional. Art Cislo is a master and a great teacher, treasure for the students.”

Keesee has already completed his contribution to the Artlink show and has since concentrated on a showing scheduled for February 2005 at Saint Francis that promises to be a breakout - a shift from the subtle energy of his oil winter landscapes to scenes of raw power and bold action.

These evolving works are a major departure in scope, style and methodology of the mild-mannered painter and are certain to cause some consternation amongst his longtime followers and those familiar with his work over the years.

Swabbing, dabbling, dripping, streaking abstract fields of color are worked onto a pair of three by four-foot canvases, then mounted in diptych fashion. These are not your grandmother’s parlor landscapes.

Keesee, following the lead of the alchemists, has developed a unique process for arriving at these newimages that reflects his experimental nature. Seldom satisfied to sit long in any one place or stick to a particular style, Keesee has always pushed his considerable talents in new directions.

In this case the painter couples his rich imagination with plenty of blank sheets of paper and begins a regime driven sometimes by chance and intuition in a kind of automatic, free-association writing.

From these dozens and dozens of studies Keesee mines inspiration and sometimes surprises. Most are abstract, biomorphic patterns about color and shape, but others can be seen as sunflowers or zinnias, and still others seem sculptural, even architectural in form.

Using these pieces as fuel, the painter then assumes the challenge of the larger canvases, one at a time.

“I’ll begin with one,” Keesee explained. “working it to a point where I’m somewhat content, then I’ll turn it to face the wall and begin with the second so as not to be too greatly influenced by what I’ve already done. In the end, when finished, something happens when they are placed together.”

Sounds a bit bizarre perhaps, but it isn’t really when you see the results. There is a kind of synapse that occurs between the two panels and I suspect that is Keesee’s realm of exploration.

In the process, this tension between nature and artifice becomes fundamental. Alchemy, as revealed in a recently released study “Promethean Ambitions” by IU professor William Newman is “primarily an art of transmutation: one metal is turned into another, one living creature erupts out of the substance of another. Alchemy is concerned with the character of that change. It thus pays attention to categories, differences and boundaries.”

Following such a description, Keesee’s newest works seem to parallel this ancient art/science and poses questions like, “If one substance is changed into another, does it change its essence or only some of its properties? Is nature being revealed or overturned?”

All in all it is a major departure for the artist and one that promises to surprise admirers old and new.

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