Bob Keefer makes hand-colored photographs — one-of-a-kind works that begin as black-and-white images printed on fine art paper, then brought to life with hand-applied acrylics. The practice has deep roots; hand coloring dates to the earliest years of photography in the 1830s.
Keefer’s interest lies in the tension between the two mediums. Photography is cool and precise; painting is emotional and expressive. In each piece, these two sensibilities meet, complement each other, and sometimes push against each other — producing work that is neither photograph nor painting but something distinctly its own.
Keefer has lived on acreage in the Oregon rainforest for more than forty years, and trees have been his most constant subject. He has come to know individual Douglas-firs, oaks, maples, madrones, and ash trees the way one knows neighbors — watching some flourish and others fall to storms, felling trees for construction, clearing downed timber from roads and trails.
Over the years he has occasionally felt the strong presence of individual trees, a sensation that led him to the work of scientists and writers exploring tree intelligence and communication. His current series of tree portraits grows from that long acquaintance — not an intellectual concept imposed on the landscape, but a recognition of something he has sensed for decades.
His wider body of work encompasses the landscapes and wildlife of the American West, from the high desert of Eastern Oregon to the mountains and valleys beyond. Each piece is a unique original — no editions, no reproductions. When a work is sold, no second version exists or ever will.
