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Contemporary art is white hot right now. My girlfriend Caitlin just got me a subscription of Juxtapoz. I’ve been an avid reader for five or more years now and it seemed right for me to finally subscribe. I like the artists in there and I truly like the graffiti spin to it. While I no longer “write” I still fully appreciate graffiti for what it is. Josh  Keyes is not a graffiti artist. He is a contemporary fine art painter & illustrator and one hell of one at that. What he’s saying is very akin to graffiti however. It seems to me that he’s saying something quite like what graff phenom BANKSY is saying. I like this edgy take on the old conflict of man vs. nature. Keyes says so much about our society whilst maintaining a very technical almost geometric approach. I remember reading a book when I was young. Forgive me for not remembering the title. It was written from the perspective of an archeologist  from the distant future. He’s digging up the artifacts from our present day. Keyes work isn’t saying that exactly but it does have its certain doomsday undertones. Their sublty ends up making the pieces much louder. Like any good artists, he seems to have a flawless grip on balance and semetry.

Like most artists, I do a lot of research. I look at the imagery in campy old sci-fi movies, and enjoy looking through ancient textbooks from the 1940-70’s. I feel like I am building a world, developing characters and planning events. I am often captivated by something I see on the street, signs, graffiti, animals, and human interaction. I like to work through these ideas in my sketchbook before I start a drawing or painting. Once an idea feels right I will start laying it out, working on the composition is the most exciting part of the process. The organization of the pictorial elements is a challenge. Trying to fill the space without actually filling it. I find the compositions of Cezanne, Jaques Luis David, Caravaggio, and Piero Della Francesca very inspiring. I like to orchestrate the angles and visual elements so that the viewer’s eye moves continuously through the work.

Once I have laid in the pictorial framework, I begin filling in areas of solid color with water color or gouache, then I begin adding all of the detail work. Though I was taught to paint from life, my work is not. It is a challenge to figure out the arrangement and color of the shadows, to make sure that all of the colors exist in the same light. Painting from life in the past helps me with these elements. One saying I remember from a figure painting class ” A light in the dark is lighter than a dark in the light”. I have many objects on my drawing table that I use as a reference, geometric forms, plastic containers, and scraps of material. Some folks have asked if I use the computer as a tool to lay out my designs. I think it would be a good tool for developing my work but I don’t have any experience with the drawing programs. At some point I may experiment with the computer, but I think I would miss the drawing process. – Josh Keyes via Fecal Face

Keyes has really developed too. His older works are more geometric and seems less about nature and more about environment, yet are still captivating. It seems he’s gotten comfortable with his current direction but as an artist myself, I know that can be dangerous. I’m going to keep my eye on this guy.