Check Out Mayce Keeler’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Mayce Keeler.

Hi Mayce, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My drive to work has always revolved around my own compulsion to sit with emotions longer than their natural lifespan. I believe one of my first types of meaningful visual creations was born from the direct inspiration of books.

As an elementary school kid, I would read a pair of well-written paragraphs, wiggle in excitement, and then close the book and dwell on the feelings and rising actions by drawing the scene itself, because I discovered you really can only re-read an exciting part over again a couple times before it loses its luster.

I do believe that this interest in stories and storytelling drove my visual work to be what it is today. I often get comments on how my pieces seem “stage-like” or as if they are a glimpse in the middle of a story. Perhaps the story’s plot is only one that I know, but it is possible it strikes you familiar as well.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Visual ideas seem to come to me naturally. In the middle of the night, as an intrusive visual thought, sparkling like pop rocks in a wet mouth. Even as the ideas flow, sometimes the motivation does not. A constant work schedule is a challenge I have worked on and continue to work to improve myself. Like my good friend and fellow artist Avia Rose has told me before, even if you already have a job to support yourself, art should be a second job. Just like you put time towards getting ready, dressed, and commuting to work, you should set aside time for your own artwork. It’s a nice thought that a casual work ethic can get you to ambitious places, and I do not doubt that some people are lucky enough to slip by on just that. Sadly good timing for the average artist will not be enough. One’s practice must be deliberate, I believe, to gain real ground in the art world, and in one’s own growth as an artist. I constantly remind myself that the thought of opportunity appearing at one’s doorstep without meaningful and mindful work is flawed.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
A large portion of my work is through painting and printmaking. These mediums prove useful to me as they are my solution to the problem of getting thoughts to a visual image. The paintings I create are normally long and drawn out. These characteristics allow the piece to breathe in a way that a sketch or even something as permanent as an ink drawing cannot. Slight mistakes can be hints of inspiration and drawn from and built around. I have found that commonly these mid-piece changes to the painting can be some of my favorite parts of them. Printmaking is simpler, as I usually restrict myself with one color, giving me a straightforward solution and process. There is an interest in the repeated images that come with printmaking, as if I am creating an army.

As my work practice continues through the years, I consistently find myself churning out images filled with allegorical references of history and my own created mythos. First evolving from heavily referenced religious paintings dealing with sexuality, my images slowly found themselves crawling out of the primordial soup into themes of masculinity, femininity, and fertility. Animals are either presented as wholly themselves, or as a chimera of human and animal characteristics and are used in my works to show how the lizard brain drives bodily desires. In my pieces, there also lies an overarching push and pull of a subjective evil vs. good in the form of religion, or lust. These visual depictions cause tension and in some cases, a source of violence.

All of these themes, and historical or imagined symbols, come together as a way to make understanding in the world. How we feel connected, deal with anxiety, and the strange, horrifying magic of being able to bring life into the world are all recurring and important topics in my work.

What was your favorite childhood memory?
A childhood memory, or memories, that seem to be the strongest are the ones dealing with water. When I was younger my mother used to take me and my brothers to the local community pool, where we would swim for what seemed like hours, and if we were lucky we would be able to buy a large, soft, cake cookie from the vending machine before going home and watching Digimon. The days seemed endless and repetitive, not to say as a child I wanted anything more than to just be swimming in the water.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: @supermundanebodies