Ian McKeever: Henge Paintings

Gaudio Fine Art, New Canaan

New paintings and works on paper by the hand of the British artist Ian McKeever are featured in his second solo exhibition at Heather Gaudio Fine Art. From October 15 until December 3, 2022, a selection of twelve Henge paintings created between 2017 and 2022 inhabit the exhibition space in New Canaan, Connecticut.

Ian McKeever’s oeuvre is marked by an ongoing exploration of abstraction in oil and acrylics on canvas or paper. The British painter’s artistic practice often works in series, creating a group of works simultaneously over two to three years. One of his most recent series consists of the Henge paintings—over thirty paintings executed in three different sizes completed over a five-year period. Arguably, McKeever’s Henge paintings are his most ambitious series in terms of number and scale. In 2016, a year before he started his first Henge painting, Ian McKeever visited a neolithic site in Avebury, the United Kingdom. Monumental ancient rocks forming three circles made a lasting impression on the artist, functioning as a source of inspiration for the series in question. Intrigued by the physicality of something standing in the world—dixit the artist himself—McKeever evokes his instinctual personal experience in the presence of these stones in formal ways.

“Unlike his earlier lyrical abstractions, which were preoccupied with depicting painting’s implicit light and suggestions of passageways using translucid layers of pigment, McKeever prioritizes the color black and its density in the Henge series. Black is a color he associates with solidity and mass. The canvases are containers of superimposed rectangular or circular planes overlapping and pooling to a concentrated density. At times parts of the bare canvas or vestiges of underlying colors peer through more thinly veiled areas, while other sections block out any suggestions of light or space therein.” (Press release — Heather Gaudio Fine Art)

It is clear to say the analogy between the neolithic stones and McKeever’s work and the creative process seems to come naturally. The use of pigment with varying opacity and luminosity is reminiscent of the natural patina and contours of the stone’s surface. However, the artist does not intend to depict the stones in a literal reading. They are assertive abstractions conjuring the passage of time, scale, and mystery of these ancient monumental rocks. Ian McKeever: “In painting a painting, one does not set out to paint what one knows, but rather tries to touch those things which one does not know, and which cannot be known.” With Ian McKeever: Henge Paintings at Heather Gaudio Fine Art, this intriguing series of pictures makes its debut in the United States. The exhibition runs until December 3, 2022.

For more information, please visit Heather Gaudio Fine Arts’s website.