Nearly a month prior to the commencement ceremony of the 2022 Class of SUNY Fredonia, senior student Madeline Keenan exhibited artworks from her series “You Can Only Find it Once it’s Lost” and “I Am,” both of which convey her connection to the environment and how it has contributed toward her growth as an artist.

Throughout the last four years, Keenan has been working toward her dual degree in drawing and painting and ceramics, a time filled with projects, papers, and guided assignments. Somewhere along this period, the artist claimed that “my brushstrokes were over-thought and my colors unengaging or expected.”

A room where she once created her art soon became discouraging. However, just as Keenan was prepared to give up, she found comfort in creating landscapes and realized that not everything she made would be something she liked. In acknowledging this, she moved past what she viewed as failures and came to create images of what was around her and eventually merged her self-portraits with these said environments. Through her artworks included in this exhibit, this idea is made evident as there is clear progress implied and observed through her color use and the scenes she chooses to depict.

While landscapes have historically been a common theme in art, not many hold the same significance to them as Keenan does. With similar visuals as modern surrealist artist Antonio Mora, she fuses her self-portraits with images that signify a turning point in her adulthood in her “I Am” series. During the last four years of her undergraduate studies, she has deconstructed the idea of who she is and has allowed her paintings to illustrate this with titles such as I am Anxious and I am Hopeful. Keenan emphasizes the feelings that her surroundings give her and how this continues to inspire and motivate her. The scenes that she recreates have had a large impact on who she has become, both as an artist and an individual, which she attempts to imply with this series.

Remarkably, within her “You Can Only Find it Once it’s Lost” series, which was the precursor to “I Am,” the meaning of what landscapes are for her begins to develop. In what started as a single painting of a landscape at the beach, she rediscovered what drew her to making art. While she was unsure of where she was going wrong, it ultimately came down to the unrecognizable works she created in which she saw a lack of herself.

In discussion, Keenan said, “When I paint landscapes, it isn’t necessarily about the environment, For me it’s about the feeling a place gave me. In the sense that I can be fully engulfed by the nature or the architecture around me. That’s how I choose where to paint.” Only when she began to fall in love with her surroundings could she include these feelings in her art, which she wanted others to see as well.

Overall, the art in this exhibit seems to relay a story of an artist finding herself amidst a period of internal struggle. Through the produced works, shifts are evident through the color palette applied and as she moves from solely landscapes to fusing her environment with her portraits. I would highly recommend seeing these paintings in person, as this is the only way to entirely grasp the significance of what Keenan depicts and how this chronologically influences the outcome of her works which are hung in the same location. This exhibit will remain on display until Tuesday at the Darwin R. Barker Library between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday and 1 to 6 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m .Saturdays.