Collection: STEVE KEENE

The concept of SK Art developed around 1993 and grew in part from Steve’s friendship with and admiration of musicians. He spent a few years as a DJ on a radio station where, surrounded by thousands of record, it was harder to find something he didn’t like than something he did.

Steve says, “I want buying my paintings to be like buying a CD: it’s cheap, it’s art and it changes your life, but the object has no status. Musicians create something for the moment, something with no boundaries and that kind of expansiveness is what I want to come across in my work.” In the past few years, he has collaborated with the Silver Jews, Pavement, The Apples in Stereo, Soul Coughing, Dave Matthews Band and Merzbow to create album art, video sets, stage sets and posters. Currently Steve sold more than 140,000 paintings.

Often, when he shows his art, he literally moves in and paints on site. Recently he has shown at Moore College of Art in Philadelphia, Rice University in Houston, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany, the Santa Monica Museum of Art in Los Angeles, the Linden Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne, Australia, the Gulf Coast Museum in Florida and the Czech Centre in London.

Even though they are created as multiples, each of Steve’s paintings is one-of-a-kind. He works constantly, producing walls full of work every day. For him, every painting is part of a single on-going work of art that is now many miles long. Each individual painting is a souvenir of this enormous work – the event of SK Art.