Keith Pfeiffer

I grew up in southwestern Virginia and received my BFA in Illustration from Virginia Commonwealth University. After graduating and a couple years of working as an illustrator, I moved to Seattle where I decided to shift my career to focus on painting. It was an inevitable pull towards painting as it was and always has been the only thing I can think about.

Instagram: @keithpfei

At the center of all my work is a search for a meaningful expression that balances between perception and abstraction. By defining the role of observation as a means and not the end, my work is free to experiment with color, shape, value, and mark making in order to explore emotional truths as well as perceptual truth. It allows me to be selective in using what I observe. I try to keep an openness to the painting in order for the painting to feel as if it is still in progress and to allow for the viewer to participate in the completion of the image. Nothing finished, but always becoming. This process involves several layers of marks that either push the painting towards realism or pull back towards abstraction, both of equal importance. Some of the works involve allowing for change to happen in the subject or scene, such as objects being rearranged or the light changing, and selectively painting these new shapes and colors as potential opportunities for enhancing the composition. Other works involve a single image source but have been scraped out, washed over, and painted over several times in an attempt to approach the painting from a new direction. Currently in my studio I have several pieces that are starting from abstraction and I’m finding the image from the abstract field of color by referencing sketchbooks, plein air paintings, photos from my daily life, or art history books.

Where would you like your work to take you?

As far as a career goes, I'd like my work to take me to a place where I can live a comfortable life painting as much as I want while also gaining the respect of my fellow artists. However, when I'm actually in the studio painting I'm not thinking of my career at all. I barely even think about when I should eat or drink water once I get going. When I'm painting, I want my work to surprise me. I want it to take me to a new experience of color, composition, texture, observation, drawing, mark making, or expression. I tend to want to work my paintings until they give me a new dopamine rush of "Oh! I didn't know you could do that." Those moments are the ones that keep taking my work forward and keep my life exciting and fulfilled. It's always fun trying to explain to someone how exhilarating my day was because I sat in a room by myself all day and put one color next to another color and something magical happened where it kinda looked like something but also didn't. Maybe you had to be there...

Which part of your creative process do you enjoy most?

I love getting myself into and out of a mess. There is something really empowering about taking a huge risk with a painting, trusting in myself that my intuition was right and that I can figure it out, and then finally hitting that moment when the painting comes together in a way that I never could have planned. Taking a risk such as mostly covering up huge areas of my painting with flat paint, washing over the whole painting with a new semi transparent color, or just generally breaking apart the image are ways I like to reset my painting when I'm feeling bored by it or (even worse) when I'm too scared to move forward. It's simultaneously a way to assert my dominance over my painting and say "This is my painting and I do what I want," and also a way to relinquish some control and let the unknown change the course of the painting. I definitely walk around 10ft tall when I work my way through a painting I was ready to give up on and instead came to a unified, balanced, harmonious, and unexpected place.

Where do you draw inspiration from?

Everywhere! I'm constantly taking photos of trash on the streets on the way to the studio or beautiful foliage in the park or faded posters stapled to a telephone pole or sunsets creeping between buildings. As far as imagery goes for painting, I'd like for my imagery to have some connection to my life but I'm really just after shapes of color. I feel like once you start painting from observation, you realize that absolutely anything is worthy of being a painting as long as the composition is interesting. I'm also always looking at art or reading about art or scrolling through instagram looking at tiny little paintings on my phone. There's so much great exciting painting happening out in the world right now. I'd say the thing that inspires me to get painting the most is the act of painting itself. I love the experimentation, study, technique, destruction, surprises, ups, downs, wins, and losses in the act of painting. I'll go to bed dreaming about where a painting could go next. Even the bad days where nothing goes right, inspire me in a way to get back in the studio just to prove that I can have another good day.

What piece of music would you say compliments your work the most?

I don't know enough about making music to really know. I do keep coming back to Bon Iver's 22 A Million as a mood setter for the studio though. It's beautiful without being sentimental and it's surprising and disruptful without turning the listener away. I love listening to all kinds of music though. Some music will calm me down to think slower and make more thoughtful decisions, while others will energize me to be bold and confident and make the big decisions that need to be made. Both are important!

Can you list a couple other creatives/friends/people you look to for inspiration?

I can't tell you enough how much my friends and fellow painters, Riley Doyle and Amy Erickson, and my brother and concept artist, Eric Pfeiffer, have inspired me and pushed my work forward. They're all incredibly thoughtful and dedicated artists and the long discussions over art making have been essential to keeping me thinking about where I want my work to go. Other painters that I admire would be (in no particular order and nowhere close to all of them) Ben Henriques, Emil Joseph Robinson, Peter Doig, Sangram Majumdar, Maja Ruznic, Joshua Hagler, Ann Gale, Susan Lichtman, Jennifer Packer, Giacometti, Diebenkorn, Nicolas Uribe, Catherin Kehoe, Cecily Brown, Euan Uglow, Vulliard, Zoey Frank, Antonio Lopez Garcia, Edmond Praybe, I could go on forever...