William McKeown

William McKeown made paintings, drawings, prints and installations that captured the openness and life-enhancing power of nature. Guided by a belief in the primacy of feeling, his paintings took on the guise of objective minimalism and the monochrome, but presented us with so much more: nature as something real, tangible, all around us, to be touched and felt. Each painting is slightly off-square, undermining the perfection of geometry, and scaled roughly to the size of the human chest, as if mirroring the capacity of our lungs to breathe in air.

William McKeown
Freedom Drawing – Starlings #3, 2006
Watercolour on paper
61 × 54 cm


Images courtesy of the William McKeown Estate and Kerlin Gallery

Survey

  • The Dayroom, 2004-2010 (Recreated 2012)

    wood, paint, electrics, oil on linen, colouring pencil on paper
    Collection of Dallas Museum of Art

  • The Seagulls, 2008

    oil on linen
    43 x 43 cm / 16.9 x 16.9 in   

  • Untitled, 2008

    oil on linen
    45 x 45.5 cm / 17.7 x 17.9 in 

  • Open Drawing - Primrose, ND

    colouring pencil on paper
    28 x 25 cm / 11 x 9.8 in

Biography

William McKeown’s work has been exhibited at the Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, NY; The Drawing Centre, New York; BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels; Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh and National Gallery of Ireland. He has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Dallas Museum of Art; LOEWE Design District Store, Miami; Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh; mima, Middlesbrough; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin; Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; Lismore Castle Arts, Lismore and Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast. In 2005, he represented Northern Ireland in the 51st Venice Biennale.

Exhibition Views