Figment
In her latest body of work, Keery explores the space where autobiographical memory and collective memory overlap, asking how personal identity is shaped not only by what we remember, but by what we inherit from others. The soft, luminous oil paintings are based on family photos and scenes that took place where the artist spent her earliest years, in a tight knit neighborhood just blocks from the mouth of the Merrimac. As the artist sifts through hundreds of moments captured on camera over the years, meticulously bringing bits and pieces of them to life on canvas, she examines the ways memory is constructed, shared, and transformed over time.
The images depict ordinary moments from the artist and her siblings’ childhood in the 90’s and early 2000’s, a time of distinctly analog and physical media and offline socialization. Cropped compositions of birthday parties, baking, bowling, and typical childhood rituals are filtered through visual manifestations of the American experience. Warm firelight and the direct flash of family photography create scenes that feel at once intimate and elusive. Vivid with the memory of summer humidity and salt air, these paintings transform everyday spaces—backyards, porches, and the New England seaside—into landscapes layered with generations of lived experience.
Central to the work is the question of memory’s reliability. How much of childhood recollection belongs to us alone, and how much has been shaped by family stories, photo albums, and home videos handed down to us? As memories blur and intertwine, the distinction between lived events and inherited narrative becomes increasingly uncertain.
On View: June 11th - August 15th at The Gallery on Federal in Newburyport, Massachusetts
