A Deep Harmony Thrumming in the Mixture: Recent Work by Kathryn Keller includes thirty-five of her beautifully rendered watercolor and oil paintings of landscapes, cityscapes, interiors, and still life subjects. Her works evokes a sense of familiarity—a sense of place—and are silent, subtle salutes to the South and the Southern way of life.

From towering, majestic trees in a pasture providing shade on a hot summer day to interior scenes of cozy living spaces with a drying umbrella or a crackling fire, Keller is inspired by the comfort and intimacy of her surroundings and experiences. Each piece is a silent tribute to the ordinary that calls us home.

This exhibition opens to the public at the Morris Museum of Art on Saturday, October 5, 2024 and remains on view through February 16, 2025.

A native of El Dorado, Arkansas, Kathryn Keller earned an undergraduate degree in fine art and English from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. She pursued further study at the Arkansas Arts Center (now the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts) in Little Rock, the Art Students League in New York City, and the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts.

Her early work—with its focus on family life, birth, and death—could be characterized as narrative in nature. In her late forties, she began working almost exclusively from life, drawing inspiration from her surroundings and her family. Over the length of a professional career that now spans nearly five decades, she has focused principally on landscapes, cityscapes, and interiors painted in oils and watercolor.

Her work has become well-known in the South and widely collected. Her breathtaking landscapes of rural Louisiana and the vibrant and colorful watercolors that depict the magical interiors of various southern homes secured her reputation. 

Her work is currently represented by LeMieux Galleries in New Orleans and by Spalding Nix Fine Art in Atlanta, and has been exhibited throughout the South, as well as in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and New York City. 

Highly sought after by museums, her work is now included in the permanent collections of fifteen public institutions, including that of the Morris Museum of Art. Her paintings, paired with those of legendary New Orleans artist Shirley Rabé Masinter, make up a two-person exhibition at the LSU Museum of Art in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, concurrent with the Morris Museum’s exhibition.