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. Sometimes presented in ‘room installations’, wooden structures with wallpaper, windows and artificial light that mimic a clinical setting, his works act as windows out onto the world – an escape from the repression and mundanity of everyday life and into the lightness and expansiveness of the sky, using subtle gradations of tone to create moments of exquisite beauty and bliss. Frequently using titles such as ‘Hope’ and ‘Freedom’, McKeown steered our attention to the air around us, capturing the feeling of our emergence into light and reminding us of our proximity to the infinite.
William McKeown was born in Tyrone, 1962, and was living and working in Edinburgh at the time of his death on October 25, 2011.
William McKeown
Freedom Drawing – Starlings #6, 2006
Watercolour on paper
58 x 50 cm / 22.8 x 19.7 in unframed
60.5 x 53.3 cm / 23.8 x 21 in framed
William McKeown
Freedom Drawing – Starlings #3, 2006
Watercolour on paper
58 x 50 cm / 22.8 x 19.7 in unframed
60.5 x 53.3 cm / 23.8 x 21 in framed
William McKeown
Cloud Cuckoo Land, 2008-2014, with Painting No. 325 (2009 - 2011)
wallpaper, dimensions variable / oil on linen, 48 x 48 cm / 18.9 x 18.9 in
Installation at Chance Encounters II, LOEWE, Miami 28 November 2016 – 31 March 2017
William McKeown
Inner Darkness, 2011
oil on linen
43 x 43 cm / 16.9 x 16.9 in
Collection of National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin
William McKeown
The Lane, 2008
oil on linen
182 x 168 cm / 71.7 x 66.1 in
Collection of Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane
William McKeown
The Dayroom, 2004-2010 (Recreated 2012)
wood, paint, electrics, oil on linen, colouring pencil on paper
Collection of Dallas Museum of Art
William McKeown
Hope painting - through the looking glass, 2005
oil on canvas
186 x 168 cm / 73.2 x 66.1 in
Collection of Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
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.
William McKeown
Chance Encounters II, 2016-2017
LOEWE, Miami, USA
William McKeown
The Dayroom, 2004-2010, 2016
Dallas Museum of Art, Texas, USA
William McKeown
William McKeown, 2013
St Carthage Hall, Lismore Castle Arts, Ireland
William McKeown
William McKeown, 2012
Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, Scotland
William McKeown
The Waiting Room, 2011
The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, Ireland
William McKeown
William McKeown, 2008-2009
Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland
William McKeown, 2016 | Pat Collins, Harvest Films - Spain, Baltimore, Co Cork
Isabel Nolan and William McKeown both have artworks on display as part of the Irish Museum of Modern Art's major curated exhibition Take a Breath.
Château La Coste presents an exhibition of works paintings by William McKeown, curated by Jonathan Anderson and featuring a work by Kazunori Hamana.
