Keith Mayerson has long swum in the sea of mass media that we exist in and reframing them by painting them, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art recently acquired his painting,Someday we’ll find it, the Rainbow Connection, the lovers, the dreamers, and me (2023). Whether now-iconic photographs of the Stonewall Riots in the summer of 1969, a view of the Grand Canyon, the crenellated skyline of Manhattan, or the Muppets, Mayerson takes subjects we already know—or think we know—and then personalizes them, filtering them through his choice of color and mark, highlight and shadow. We see them through Keith’s eyes and in so doing see them anew.
