This gallery shows current work by an artist friend Clayton Keyes,
who recently earned his MFA from the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Audrey was one of his previous art instructors while Clayton was a student at Northern Oklahoma College.
She served on his graduate committee, and we attended the opening of his show.
Most of these photos were taken that afternoon prior to the opening.
Clayton provided the following statement.
omens and prodigies
by
clayton keyes
Omens and Prodigies is testament to the nature of my feelings about the destructive treatment of our environment and
the Human progenies’ consequential collective future therein. As I created this body, I have delved into notions of
impermanence, stewardship, and legacy. Children, hunted and incapacitated animals, and emotions of empathy, conflict,
humiliation, excess and turmoil characterize this work. Here, I have rendered children who mourn the passing of their
animal counterparts, children who question their own role in the hunt, and even a child of extravagance and
wastefulness, who delights in dispatching a rabbit for mere self-embellishment. I set these children as omens, to caution
against prodigality, and to be a present reminder for those whom our great excesses may do harm.