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ARTIST PROFILE
Julia O'Malley-Keyes
Whether the style is swing, cool,
fusion or any other genre, no jazz player had a greater, wider influence on
modern musicians than did Miles Dewey Davis, cover subject for this year’s
Tanglewood Jazz Festival. “I have a tremendous amount of respect for Miles
Davis,” says Julia O’Malley-Keyes, who created the painting reproduced on this
issue’s cover. “He was very inventive, and anybody with an interest in jazz of
any kind has to respect him as a major mover and groover when it comes to the
jazz scene. When you think of jazz, you think of Miles.”
O’Malley-Keyes worked from the black
and white photography of Lee Tanner to create the colorful, energizing depiction
of the jazz legend. Tanner, influential himself for his photographs dating back
to 1958, graciously provided her with original slides from his collection.
Interpreting from that image, O’Malley-Keyes added color while still maintaining
the cool mood caught by Tanner’s lens. A contemporary realist, her paintings
find the life in the light and movement of her subjects, as it does here.
“I really enjoyed doing it, because
it’s a departure from what I usually do,” said O’Malley-Keyes, whose more usual
subjects reflect her lifelong love of the sea and its coastline. O’Malley-Keyes
resides in North Falmouth, Massachusetts, where she lives and paints at Day Hill
Fine Art, at 53 Winslow Road. Originally built as a workspace and showcase for
O’Malley-Keyes’ work, it is now filled with both her paintings and the work of
other artists. (For more, see the web site at
www.dayhillfineart.com.)
Her affinity for the ocean is
reflected in her specialties, which include landscapes of coastal areas,
seascapes, and paintings of classic yachts – including “the four big Js,” the
classic sailing yachts Endeavor, Shamrock, Velsheda, and The Ranger. She is the
only female artist that she knows in the entire United States who paints classic
maritime paintings.
Not surprisingly, her work is often
found in galleries in seaside towns. In addition to her home base, she exhibits
at the Robert Wilson galleries of Nantucket and Sarasota (Florida), the
Gardner-Colby Gallery in Edgartown, and the Weatherburn Gallery in Naples,
Florida, among others. “I’m a coastal person,” she says. “When I get
inland, I start to feel claustrophobic. If I can’t smell the salt air, I think
something’s wrong.”
O’Malley-Keyes, 57, is the daughter
of artistic parents. Her father was a published author and her mother was a
master weaver. She began painting at age 8, an interest supported by her father,
Niall O’Malley-Keyes, a world traveler who once spent two years aboard a whaling
ship while writing his first novel, Blubber Ship. “My father kept me in art
supplies,” she says, smiling as she thinks of her 8-year-old self with, “a
highly toxic, full set of paints.”
Her large family – there were eight siblings – moved around quite a bit. At age
16, while living in Littleton, New Hampshire, she sold her first painting, of a
farmhouse. It was purchased for $250 by a friend of her father’s, Baron and
Baroness Von Pantz, owner of the mountain resort Mittersill. She recalls it
being a lot of money back then, though these days her paintings run from $3,000
up to $35,000.
While she continued to paint for
family and friends, most of her adult life was spent in the business world.
Working as a vice president of sales and marketing for a woman’s apparel firm,
she would travel all over the world, with art supplies packed in her luggage.
While on a business trip to New York City in 1988, she stopped into a gallery in
the SoHo district and asked if they’d be interested in exhibiting her work. They
were, and a second career was born.
This is O’Malley-Keyes’ second year
as the featured artist for the Tanglewood Jazz Festival. Her work is collected
by private collectors and corporations, and she has also painted commissioned
landscapes and portraits for a wide variety of clients, including ABC
television’s Charles Gibson and Don Graham, publisher of the Washington Post.
Most notable among the portraits, at least for fans of music, is the
portrait of pianist Harry Connick,
Jr.
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