Terrence Keller

An abstract painter from Edmonton, Alberta, he is one of several who emerged as original contributors to modernist painting in Canada beginning in the early 1980’s, pressing on in the 1990’s, and  forging onward until illness slowed him down in the 2010’s. 

His instructors in college included abstract painter Harold Feist and Ranjan Sen, both of whom were particularly influential in shaping Keller’s attitude toward painting in that both stressed the importance of visual values over theory. They encouraged their students to be open to all possibilities and to exploit unconventional methods to achieve visual ends.

Keller was particularly impressed with Feist’s ambition to “make great art” and that became his life’s passion.

His work developed steadily for some 40 years to become recognized as one of the finest Alberta painters of his generation. His works have been shown extensively in Western Canada, and in Toronto, Montreal, New York and Barcelona. Terrence’s paintings are held in the collections of the Canada Council Art Bank, the Art Gallery of Alberta, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the University of Alberta, the City of Edmonton, the Glenbow Museum, Nova Corporation, Westburn Industries, the Boston Museum Collection, the Solicitor General of New York, and the City of Barcelona as well as in a number of private collections.

His manner was unique and immediately recognizable. His paintings had an untidy air, which may account for their initial difficulty. They belong to the tradition of all over painting, with roots in the analytical cubism of Picasso and Braque, and more recently with Jackson Pollock, Jules Olitski, and the Larry Poons of the ’70s and ’80s. They offered a kind of disheveled cubism, as though the elements of the painting, brush strokes, scrapes, and spatters, had somehow collapsed into place, but their structure remains firmly in place, like a natural stone wall.