The List Gallery is pleased to present Darra Keeton: 1989-2009. This survey of selected works in oil, gouache, collage, and photography highlights the artist's decades-long exploration of a visual language for emotional, analytical, and physiological processes.  Keeton will lecture about her work on Thursday, November 5, at 4:30 p.m. in the Lang Performing Arts Center Cinema. The opening reception in the List Gallery will immediately follow, 5:30-7:00 p.m.  All events are free and open to the public. Events are sponsored by the Swarthmore College Department of Art.

              Keeton's works demonstrate her engagement with the evocative possibilities of varied media such as oil, acrylic, gouache, and photography. Her imagery mingles abstracted forms with those observed in nature and poses conversations between art, science, and cognition. Many compositions present layered and interlocking lines or spheres suggestive of organic structures such as root systems, cells, or synaptic networks.

              Her works shimmer with varied layers of paint—saturated colors intersect with dilute washes of white, pink, or grey. Gestural brushstrokes merge with areas that are more viscous; drips and pours further describe space, gravity, and the passage of time. Her painterly gestures emphasize both interconnection and entropy. Whether suggesting cell structures or precarious neural networks, her images appear caught in a dynamic process­. Her structures seem to waver, like an idea or memory that could either coalesce or dissipate.

              Although her interest in tenuous biomorphic forms and networks preceded her diagnosis with Parkinsons disease in 2001, Keeton's observation of her own illness has intensified qualities of urgency and expression in her work. Gradually, the scale of her work has become more intimate and titles such as My Big Amygdala and Axon hint both directly and sometimes wryly at the larger processes that shape (or confound) perception. Rather than offering an autobiographical narrative, Keeton searches for universal truths about vulnerability and resilience—a rich visual journey of experiment and discovery.

              During the past two decades, Keeton has mounted over a dozen solo exhibitions nationally including at The Galveston Arts Center, Galveston, TX; Art in General, New York City; Still-Zinsel Contemporary Art, New Orleans, LA; Cress Gallery, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, TN; and Sally Sprout Gallery, Houston, TX.  Her work has been shown internationally at Amerika Haus, Frankfurt, Germany and Holy Royde College, University of Manchester, England. Her group exhibitions have included shows at the New Orleans Museum of Art, Kunstferhaus, Vienna, Austria, and The Brooklyn Museum of Art. Distinguished collections have collected her work including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Kansas City Institute of Art; the Islip Art Museum; the New Orleans Museum of Art; and William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut-Storrs. In April 2010, her work will be featured at The Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, Mississippi.