The Best Days Ever.....by Keith Lindberg

Greetings, Friends and Fans of Keith Lindberg! Currently on the wall in the Barney Segal Room at Carmel Art Association is the painting The Best Days Ever by nationally-renowned artist Keith Lindberg. The CAA’s longest-reigning Artist Member, Keith’s work is perhaps best viewed as an extension of the Bay Area Figurative Movement, typified by such artists as David Park and Elmer Bischoff. His working methods bear this out. Recently I was discussing this painting with a long-time collector of Keith’s work, and we were admiring the fact that Keith’s paintings, while colorful and vibrant, derive their power from his skillful use of muted gray tones. Grays and muted tones—static neutrals—create a subdued feeling. A hint of color in a field of gray can brighten up a canvas as well as the viewer’s emotions, often with more effect than whole fields of saturated color. As in life, things are often defined by contrast, that is, by what they are not. We know color because we know gray. Keith utilizes this principle to striking effect. Standing before The Best Days Ever one notes that even in the areas of vibrant blues and magentas, fragments of colors from the surrounding neutral fields are archived within the strokes. What appears to be a blue sky from a distance is interrupted with darts of broken color. Because of this working method, all areas of the work speak to each other and unify the whole. Keith works his compositions as a whole. He makes adjustments and then solidifies them beneath his signature bold brush strokes. Within the rectangle of free-flowing, bold paint handling, Keith is actually expertly guiding us through the ebbs and flows of grays and colors to the focus point, a seemingly effortless dash of bright orange paint delineating the neck, ear, and chin of the woman in the foreground. It immediately brings to mind the daring red of the sitter’s ear in David Park’s Man in a T-Shirt, 1958. Keith is telling a story in this painting, a somber ageless tale of a shared human moment. Two souls pause, warm sunlight on the backs of their necks and faces as the sun dips below the horizon. They look left into the distance. In Western tradition reading left to right, looking left often indicates a look back to the past. Keith is asking us to reminisce about the warmth of days gone by…to conjure up The Best Days Ever. oil on canvas 36x48 inches finished with white slat molding

-- Chris Leib, Sales Associate Carmel Art Association