Angles of Intention: Paintings by David Mackenzie & James O'Keefe

On view: January 7-29, 2023
Artist Reception: Saturday, January 14, 6 - 8pm during the Second Saturday Gallery Walk
Joshua Tree Art Gallery: 61607 29 Palms Hwy, Suite B, Joshua Tree, CA
Gallery hours: Fridays 11am - 3pm, Saturdays 9am - 3pm and Sundays 12 - 3pm

Joshua Tree Art Gallery presents Angles of Intention, a series of paintings created by minimalist artists David Mackenzie and James O'Keefe. Each artist explores their own unique use of line, color and space to highlight the freedom and flexibility of their chosen medium in a sculptural or engineered form.

David Mackenzie (1942-2020) was born, raised, started and ended his painting career in California. One must appreciate Mackenzie's past reflections while viewing this body of work. "My work is a mediation between fractured and deconstructed perspectives. It is my way of coming to terms with painting's inherent contradictions of representation and the concrete. I have deliberately and radically reduced the elements in my work in order to clearly understand the painting's nature. Shifting perceptions, reflected light, color/material and location are what interest me along with spacial tension. My approach is strictly intuitive when it comes to these matters."

James O'Keefe's selected works were all made in 2022. They are representative of a continuing effort to be more minimal in color and form. A central question in his reductive process is "How can I say the most in a way that appears the least? Surprisingly, I have found that when following this" less is more "strategy there always seems to be more and more answers to find." Although these works are described as "paintings", they are very much independent objects and could be seen in a similar manner as one would view contemporary sculpture.

David Mackenzie was born in Los Angeles and received both his BFA and MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, where he studied ceramics, sculpture and painting. His work has been included in the Whitney Biennial and has been shown in Italy, France, Germany, and Russia. He has received grants from the Pollack-Krasner Foundation and the National Foundation for the Arts. David has work in the Phillips Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art in Embassies program, the Oakland Art Museum, and the Rene di Rosa Foundation among others. He was a member of American Abstract Artists, an organization to promote abstract art since 1936. David Mackenzie died June 11, 2020. During his last decade, he worked in Joshua Tree, where he found a meditative rhythm, producing his last series of structured-surface paintings. 
www.davidmackenzie4.com

James O'Keefe's work is about metaphorical space and line traversing that space. He has been painting since 1988 and has a BFA from Otis Art Institute. O'Keefe spent the last 30 years residing on the Oregon Coast and now lives in Joshua Tree, CA.
https://www.thesemi-finalist.com/artist-interviews/the-semi-finalist-is-james-okeefe