Josef Isaiah Keyes (b. 1990, Washington, D.C.) is a visual artist based and working in the “Chocolate City”. He attended The Art Institute of Washington, where he majored in Photography but soon left to study on his own. He has never strayed away from Visual Arts since early 2014, though working numerous odd jobs to support himself. In between these jobs, he’d continually worked on his collection, from the most minimalist work to grand mystic stories of self-reflection carved into many different media. His practice explores the beauty of Abstraction and self-actualization as a human being. Josef Isaiah approaches his work as an unplanned meditation.
Using mixed media, he communicates with an inner-personal language, expressing his deepest innermost essence. Josef’s philosophy merges elements such as mind, body, soul; beauty, and aesthetics.
Josef Isaiah Keyes has shown in numerous exhibitions including his first showing, entitled “Lusting Love” at Homme DC located in Washington, DC in 2017. And as of 2021, becoming a full-time professional Artist.
Artist Statement
Within a self-imagined perspective, I blur the unconscious and awareness of the individual. My present abstract work is often childlike, a poetic language of an unplanned journey—a mediation through different layings of the mind, body, and spirit. Stories of brilliant colors, with textual forms that dance and sit in a harmonious state of peace and moments of chaos.
I’m interested in creating from an understanding of the Spirituality and the playfulness of one’s own self. This quote from Alma Thomas that stuck with me has inspired my ideas; “Through color, I have sought to concentrate on beauty and happiness, rather than on man's inhumanity to man.”
I’m invested in this dialog, and self-reflection between spirit and my physical identity as a human within our society. My many practices form around inspiring and encouraging others to contemplate these works, and ideas within themselves. To learn as I about who and what we are as people together and separate. I find this quote by James Balwin to end with another restatement to my experience and philosophy of my work: “You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.”
