Keith Mayerson

(American, born 1966)

Keith Mayerson is a contemporary American painter known for his work depicting historical figures, family snapshots, urban landscapes, and more. His representational paintings conflate images of popular culture and personal experience into a relational universe, asking the viewer to engage with and between images as a group. Born in 1966 in Cincinnati, OH, Mayerson received his BFA from Brown University in Providence, RI in 1988 before earning his MFA from the University of California Irvine. When asked about the conceptual relationship between comics and his work, the artist stated: “When you have one panel next to another panel, and your mind creates the ultimate content between those two panels—your mind becomes an accomplice. I do have repeated motifs—I painted James Dean a whole bunch of times.” Mayerson has been exhibiting his work since 1993, and today is in the permanent collection of many major institutions, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. He was notably highlighted in the 2014 Whitney Biennial, and subsequently featured in the inaugural exhibition of the new Whitney Museum in New York. Mayerson currently lives and works in New York, NY.