Patricia Keeler

I am a fine artist who works in several mediums but predominately in pastel and silk painting. In my pastel paintings I primarily explore the themes coming from my soul, and imagination dovetailed with ethnic myths, my dreams, my travels and life experience.  Through these processes I consider myself a visionary artist.  My pastel painting is a form of meditation for me, a progression, process and practice of reaching deep inside to where my soul and vision meets the canvas.

My silk painting is from another realm, that of commerce, as I sell to fashionable boutiques.  I paint silk scarves of various types of silk and sizes.  I also redesign vintage slips and make them into dresses. I re-dye the slips and decorate them with my painted silk to make pockets. sleeves, ruffled hemlines, etc., and also place vintage buttons, antique pins, bows, and unusual items onto these revamped fashions.

Through my pastel work I seek to prompt, remind and allow the viewer to summarize for themselves and to look deep within to the place of their soul, and their remembrance of another time and space where they too have been.

The silk paintings are made from allowing the paint to spread and mix, and my own imagination.  I also work with fashion colors and trends, and with personal client’s choices for both the scarves and the dresses. The dresses are recycled vintage slips made into one of a kind whimsical, innovative, and avant-garde dresses that conjure up each viewer and owner to be encouraged to access their own whimsical self.

I was born in Connecticut and as an adult have lived in the west, primarily Colorado, but now more recently in Toas, New Mexico. My dream was to live in Taos as it is an historic art community, and to be connected with other artists who have a passion for living in this wonderful artist community, in the beautiful Sangre De Christo mountains.

I am also a school psychologist and possess an M.A. in School Psychology, and a Ph.D. in Jungian Psychology and Art Therapy.  In addition to working in the schools, I presently do art therapy and art work with Veterans with an organization “Veterans Off Grid”.  My art classes and retreats are for vets and civilians as well. I have also started two initiative projects:

“Art 4 Vets: Blueprint 4 Healing” – I do art/art therapy with veterans.

“The Brazil Art Assignment” – I give a percentage of my art sales to street children and the care of them in Brazil. My present goal is to establish myself in Taos, although I have shown and sold my work in galleries and boutiques around the U.S., and have exhibited my revamped slip dresses in many shows displaying recycled materials. I presently live in an off grid progressive community on the outskirts of Taos, and that is where I have my studio and retreat community and where I do my own art and teach others as well.