The Ohio Artist Registry (OAR) is an exciting opportunity for artists to share their work, connect with the creative community, and establish an online presence—all on a free, virtual platform! The OAR encourages artists working in all art forms, throughout Ohio and beyond, to create a profile, which allows them to better promote themselves and their work. Being listed in the OAR provides artists with new opportunities to share their work with clients, galleries, patrons, and audiences. A listing in the OAR does not confer an endorsement, approval, or verification by the Ohio Arts Council.
For more information, contact Kathy Signorino, artist programs director, at kathy.signorino@oac.ohio.gov or 614-728-6140.
2024 Ohio Artist Registry Juried Exhibition
Erica Keener
Bio
For the first fifteen years of her professional career, Erica Keener worked as a field archaeologist in Ohio, extensively covering back roads, woods and farmland. Her specialty was drawing exact renditions of artifacts found on digs as a method to record the items. Once the demands of motherhood required her to stay at home, she began to devote time to her true passion, original art.
As her style has progressed, she has moved on from being influenced by the styles of others, such as the highly-regarded Impressionists, to developing an esthetic that is uniquely her own. With her bold use of color and her eye for natural detail, Erica’s work captures the world around us, yet requires viewers to reconsider even the most mundane of daily scenes in what she refers to as “luminous brightscapes”. The viewer is thus rewarded with a refreshed look at the world.
Erica lives with her husband, her two children, and various pets on a farm in southwestern Ohio that has been in her husband’s family for five generations. She currently works as an administrative assistant for Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
Through her paintings, Erica Keener’s hope is to share the sanctuary that she finds in nature, particularly when contemplating the ever changing skies above. She encourages everyone to look around more often – and especially to look up. She is privileged to be a member of the supportive art community in Dayton and has a studio at the Front Street Art complex. Her award winning art has been exhibited in Richmond, Oxford, Dayton and Cincinnati and can be found at the McCullough-Hyde Memorial Hospital in Oxford, Henny Penny Corporate Headquarters in Eaton as well as local private collections throughout the Miami Valley area and as far as Texas and Connecticut.
More of Erica’s artwork can be seen on her website, http://www.ek-excavations.com, and on Facebook and Instagram.
Artist Statement
I am an artist, an archaeologist, a former soccer mom, a lover of nature, science and history. I am an observer – constantly looking down at a flower, an artifact, a book, or up at clouds, birds, sunlight through the trees. I chase shadows, explore colors, watch the seasons change. I find a sense of wonder in the ordinary. My hope is that what is on the surface just a painting of the sky or fields becomes a source of comfort, and that my little contribution to making the world a better place is to share with others the sanctuary I find when shadow and light and color come together in those fleeting moments of harmony.
