About the Artist

Maureen O’Keefe is a portrait and figure painter living and

working in mid-western Ohio.  The process for Maureen's current body of work involves a return to the blind-contour drawing that is taught in beginning art classes. The artist never lifts the pencil from the surface and never looks at the drawing; only at the subject. Once a line drawing is finished, she has a template for a finished work.  Her work investigates identities and belonging, often in a religious or spiritual context.

Maureen received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2005.  Maureen is a recipient of the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for FY2019 and has exhibited widely. In January of 2023 Maureen was an artist in residence at the Chateau Orquevaux in Orquevaux, France.  She has been teaching drawing and painting courses at Edison State Community College since 2009.

Artist’s Statement

I am a realist.

Realism is in our flaws, our uncertainty, our mistakes, and

even our sin.

I think that the culture I come from expects perfection and

utilitarianism.  I want to express that

humanity isn’t that. Existence isn’t that. 

We are a messy species from our litter to our wars, our diversity, and our

emotions. Our culture and capacity for abstract thought hint at something more

than utilitarianism. Maybe the artist is a mirror so the world can see itself.

My blind-contour drawing process allows me to produce images

of specific people that are sometimes identifiable in the details, but they are

distorted, flawed, doubled or disjointed. The process takes away the hope of

perfection from the outset. It is realer than realism.  The beauty I find in my work is in its

complexity- in its weirdness and its imperfection because that’s what I think

of people.  Humans are simple and

mysterious; at once both worthless and of incalculable value, ugly and

beautiful, defiant of the slim odds of existence and still so fragile. And

perfection was never the point.