Babylon Revisited

About the Work

From the Artist

Speculation is the only way possible for me to indicate why I follow one direction or another. Happenings on paper or canvas are predictable up to a critical point for me. Beyond this, intuition and instinct take over. I only know that any verbal statement can only give vague clues as to why I pursue a certain direction in working and thinking. For me the subject matter simply becomes a vehicle used to help discover the mystery. Then the idea becomes the mystery that must be made real; it is the means by which I render some of what I assume I know with the unknown. I hang on and take the wild ride.
—From Brandywine Workshop and Archives records

My style is how I see things, how they filter through you. I paint intuitively. I can’t plot and plan…it’s all in my head and it depends upon the color and then I get a big idea of what I’m supposed to do and then I try to do it. If painting your art makes any sense, then it has to come out, and sometimes you wish it to come out with much more enthusiasm or from much more excitement than it does, but you have to be proud. After a certain point, it’s putting this together, and you just plot and scrape away…you either throw it away or it leads you to a new idea. So, you start a new canvas, or you take all of that out, but one little place that works, then you start again.
_{—Excerpted from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oz72bw0kOoo, accessed 6-25-2021}

Between 1980 and 1996, Paul F. Keene, Jr. created five prints at Brandywine. The artist abstracts figurative images into geometric cubes in Babylon Revisited, 1986, a six-color offset lithograph and three-color screenprint (edition of 30). Keene is well-known for his intricate compositions and color arrangements. Keene changed his artistic approach while working on a print. If the painter does not like the color, he can easily apply another layer on top to change it. It is more difficult to change the color of a print in printmaking Colors are translucent in the offset process, and when applied on top of each other, part of the previous color remains visible—it either changes the color or leaves a latent image that suggests the edge/form of the previous color printed. To change or delete a printed shaper or mark after the colors have darkened, the artist must usually resort to screenprinting and apply an opaque overlay. Keene wanted gold and silver after offset printing several colors, which tend to lose their metallic quality when printed on absorbent rag papers. It yielded intriguing results, but not the brilliance associated with shiny, metallic colors. The switch to screen-printed metallic colors achieved the desired effect by this time. Keene's deeply personal images combine the painter's visceral love of color with the mystery of memory and the subconscious mind. Keene is a quiet man who prefers to communicate through line, shape, and, most passionately, color. He avoids didacticism by providing hints and suggestions before leaving us to discover our own meaning in his work.
_{— Adapted from Bruce Katsiff, from https://bucksco.michenerartmuseum.org/artists/paul-f-keene, accessed 6-25-2021 and  "Fresh, Human and Personal: Signature of Brandywine Workshop," Three Decades of American Printmaking: The Brandywine Workshop Collection (Manchester, VT: Hudson Hills Press, 2004)}