Joseph Keiffer reviewed in the Washington Post

by Mark Jenkins
December 14th, 2018

Joseph Keiffer. "New York Typewriter," 2017, oil on canvas. (Joseph Keiffer/Gallery Neptune & Brown)

“Nothing is too small, or too immaterial, to elude Joseph Keiffer’s eye. There are landscapes in the realist painter’s show at Gallery Neptune & Brown, “Traveling Light,” but more common are still lifes: a plate of gummy candy, playfully teetering stacks of cups and small teapots, a typewriter scrolled with a sheet of paper that contains the artist’s signature. These recently made pictures tend to be modest in scale and subject, but with a grand intent: “to convey a sense of being there,” according to Keiffer’s remarks. The show’s title has a double meaning. It refers to the artist’s frequent travels to Manhattan, Maine and Upstate New York, where he paints on location. It also alludes to Keiffer’s mastery of natural light, whether distilled into a glowing moon in a midnight-blue sky or diffused as in a picture that depicts a room with a door opened, as though to beckon sunbeams in. Only one of these pictures features any people, but all of them are testaments to human vision.”