Barry Thomas

Kathleen Keifer is a California based internationally collected artist. She is a leading force of New California Realism. With a high level of technical virtuosity, Keifer creates a new sense of reality with textures and colors that seem to add lighting effects and distinct shadows, confronting the viewer with new interpretations of familiar objects. Keifer’s paintings invite the viewer to consider the complex relationship between time and timelessness. It is the sheer visual interaction between the elements, taken in their bare simplicity that interests her. For her, the painting captures the very essence of time and its passage. She believes that actual sites and places have individual magic. The goal is to take objects from popular culture and paint them in a new narrative context. Her complex approaches to popular board games present the subjects as living, tangible objects. Keifer’s interest took her to paint bits and pieces of board games. Her husband had been designing and inventing board games for thirty years and her homes and studios are filled with games and playing pieces. She is fascinated with the response these board games (and bits and pieces) evoke in us as adults. Sure there's the tug of childhood and nostalgia, the innocence of playing a game with clear rules and clear winners. But somehow these board games live in an unconscious dream-realm where they represent something more than the detritus of playtime. All the while she is painting them in the context of living in Los Angeles, a cultural capital filled with pop art and pop culture. Born and raised in Chicago, Kathleen Keifer is a second-generation artist. Her mother, also a fine artist, exposed Keifer to the world of art and supervised her training from a very early age. This legacy continues today as Keifer closely nurtures the development of the artistic leaning in each of her three daughters, inspiring a third generation of female artists. Her works are represented by Artspace Warehouse, Los Angeles and have been exhibited and collected internationally, including Chicago, New York and London.

Painting is an art form that has spanned innumerable cultures, with artists using the medium to tell stories, explore and communicate ideas and express themselves. To bring abstract, landscape and still-life paintings into your home is to celebrate and share in the long tradition of this discipline.

When we look at paintings, particularly those that originated in the past, we learn about history, other cultures and countries of the world. Like every other work of art, paintings — whether they are contemporary creations or works that were made during the 19th century — can often help us clearly see and understand the world around us in a meaningful and interesting way.

Cave walls were the canvases for what were arguably the world’s first landscape paintings, which depict natural scenery through art. Portrait paintings and drawings, which, along with sculpture, were how someone’s appearance was recorded prior to the advent of photography, are at least as old as Ancient Egypt. In the Netherlands, landscapes were a major theme for painters as early as the 1500s. Later, artists in Greece, Rome and elsewhere created vast wall paintings to decorate stately homes, churches and tombs. Today, creating a wall of art is a wonderful way to enhance your space, showcase beautiful pieces and tie an interior design together.

No matter your preference, whether you favor Post-Impressionist paintings, animal paintings, Surrealism, Pop art or another movement or specific period, arranging art on a blank wall allows you to evoke emotions in a room while also showing off your tastes and interests. A symmetrical wall arrangement may comprise a grid of four to six pieces or, for an odd number of works, a horizontal row. Asymmetrical arrangements, which may be small clusters of art or large, salon-style gallery walls, have a more collected and eclectic feel. Download the 1stDibs app, which includes a handy “View on Wall” feature that allows you to see how a particular artwork will look on a particular wall, and read about how to arrange wall art. And if you’re searching for the perfect palette for your interior design project, what better place to turn than to the art world’s masters of color?

On 1stDibs, you’ll find an expansive collection of paintings and other fine art for your home or office. Browse abstract paintings, portrait paintings, paintings by popular artists and more today.