Jeanie Collin Keys (Photo by Sarah Der)
“I did not ever plan this,” Jeanie Collin Keys says as she looks back over her artistic career. Inspired by memories of her childhood, Keys creates large oil paintings, usually depicting wildly colorful displays of flowers, often in imaginary settings. For a recent show at Quirk Gallery Richmond, the self-taught artist also exhibited small wall sculptures and a free-standing sculpture created in collaboration with her daughter, Andréa Keys Connell, an associate professor of ceramics at Appalachian State University and the former head of the clay area at VCU Arts.
Keys’ parents immigrated from Hungary, and she grew up in Luray, Virginia, where listening to classical music and having parents who spoke five languages set her apart from others her age. Keys majored in art education at Longwood College (now University), but she had a “Hell, no!” moment while student teaching. She married her college sweetheart and moved to Northern Virginia, where she had two children and pursued a career in graphic arts.
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Untitled, oil on canvas, 30 inches by 40 inches (Image courtesy Jeanie Collin Keys)
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Untitled, oil on canvas, 24 inches by 48 inches (Image courtesy Jeanie Collin Keys)
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Untitled, found materials, wood, clay, plastic, 16 inches by 41 inches (Photo by Sarah Der)
Keys began painting after having her children, choosing watercolors because they were nontoxic and easier to clean up. Friends soon pressured her to show her work, and she began exhibiting in galleries, with much success. Keys had a keen business sense and discovered that incorporating something familiar into a painting, such as a piece of family china, gave her access to the lucrative market for customized art pieces.
After going through a stressful divorce, she had to support herself and her two middle-school-aged children. “I learned somehow to trust the process,” says the artist. Gaining knowledge as she went, Keys mastered typesetting and advertising — before the days of computers. She worked as an art director, ran a frame shop and had a job in an art gallery, eventually building a frame shop in her home.
One year at a New Year’s Eve party, she was introduced to the general manager of the Nordstrom department store in Tyson’s Corner, and Keys was invited to show her work there. Her first show sold out within three hours, leading to 13 productive years of making prints for sale in Nordstrom stores. Keys had to hire help and eventually had to outsource the printmaking to keep up with the demand. And then, just as suddenly as it began, it all came to an end, when Nordstrom Home eliminated all outside vendors. While working through the resulting changes, Keys, who relocated to Church Hill in 2013, began painting with oils, creating beautiful canvases that evoke memories, dreams, a sense of deja vu.
“Everything is metaphor,” Keys says in describing her work. “I [am] fascinated with surface decorations, patterns and family place settings. Painting flowers and vases within imaginary environments is my emotional marking, translating the warmth I feel from the past. The paintings are visual journeys between reality and imagination in time. I think about the fragility, the beauty, the symbolism and the grace of flowers as a reminder of the miraculous life moments we hold in our hands.”
