Kit Keith

THEN / NOW  In her second exhibit at The Phatory LLC, Kit Keith continues the use of found material as the template upon which to plot her graphic imagery. For this series, the focus is on an array of female portraits painted over portions of large-scale area maps.  These disembodied faces rendered in Keith’s signature style of sign painting from the 1950’s conjure up a multitude of associations from staged astral projection, to kitsch bottle cork, to dazed B-movie starlet, to that picture in your head of your mother that time you awoke from your first hangover. Given the random nature of her materials, this latest find has provided Keith an opportunity to employ a single medium to create a body of work, and play tongue-in-cheek with the notion of  landscape painting.

Kit Keith was born in St. Louis and learned graphic lettering while apprenticing with her father, who was a professional sign painter. She then studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. Keith also performed for six years as a trapeze artist with the Sailor Circus of Sarasota, Florida.