Artist Profile: Gina Keatley
New York City, USA
Gina Keatley is a New York–based abstract artist whose work explores memory, erosion, and emotional endurance through textured, contemplative compositions. Known professionally as The Untamed Minimalist, she constructs meditative surfaces using layered paper, restrained gestures, and a distinctive palette of bone-white, graphite black, and mandarin orange—each hue chosen for its emotional weight rather than just aesthetic appeal.
Keatley’s practice is rooted in global influence. Her travels—from volcanic coastlines in Italy to sacred ruins in Cambodia—inform the rhythm, texture, and atmosphere of her work. These physical and spiritual landscapes are embedded into her canvases as subtle echoes, revealed through smudges, fissures, and carefully unearthed layers.
Her current body of work, Untamed Moderns, is a quiet investigation into the inner terrain of thought and presence. The pieces resist spectacle, instead inviting the viewer into a space of reflection—where surface becomes story, and stillness speaks.
Currently Exhibiting in: Bushwick, Brooklyn
Web: untamedmoderns.com
Instagram: @untamedmoderns | @ginakeatley
Gina Keatley’s entry into the art world was not incidental—it was intentional, focused, and driven by a desire to communicate through material rather than words. With each work, she constructs a layered visual language that investigates duality: the seen and the unseen, softness and strength, permanence and collapse. Her paintings often reveal themselves slowly—rewarding close, patient looking.
The textural quality of her work is central. Torn paper, raw edges, and sediment-like buildup suggest archaeological depth rather than surface design. The physical act of layering becomes metaphor—each work built through repetition, erasure, and response, mimicking the way memory accumulates and fades over time.
In addition to her studio practice, Keatley is the founder of Bushwick Gallery, a creative space committed to showcasing diverse contemporary voices and fostering intimate, immersive experiences. Her curatorial vision is an extension of her artistic one—slow, thoughtful, and emotionally attuned. But in her own studio, the process narrows. It becomes quiet. It becomes listening.
Keatley’s paintings do not demand stillness—they provoke inquiry. They meet viewers wherever they are, offering space for curiosity, emotion, and interpretation without prescription. In a world where speed is expected, her work offers depth—rooted not in restraint, but in intention.
Featured Artwork at Bushwick Gallery
Rhapsody in Graphite
Year of Creation: 2024
Medium: Acrylic and paper on canvas
Dimensions: Two 48 x 48-inch canvases (total: 48 x 96 inches)
Edition Type: Unique, 1 of 1
Location: New York, NY
Price: $8,600
Description
In Rhapsody in Graphite, black gestural lines orbit and intersect across layered planes of muted tones, forming a suspended choreography of tension and release. The twin canvases—each 48 by 48 inches—speak to duality and reflection, inviting the viewer to consider balance, fragmentation, and repetition. Beneath the surface, embedded papers offer quiet disruptions—an archaeological trace of time and thought. The piece is both architectural and emotional, echoing Keatley’s global influences while remaining rooted in her distinctive, intentional voice.
Exhibition Information
April 2025: Urban Narratives: The City as Canvas
Curated by: Fern Messa Joson
Theme: Turning the cityscape into a canvas, this exhibition captures the raw, vibrant energy of urban life through painting, graffiti, street photography, and more.
Exhibition Dates: April 3 – April 10, 2025
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 3 | 6 PM – 8 PM
Guided audio experience
For accessibility, the full video transcript is provided below for those who prefer to read or are unable to listen.
“Here in Rhapsody in Graphite, the city isn’t shown—it’s felt. Gina Keatley transforms raw material and restrained color into a dense visual field that speaks to the layered nature of urban life. Two square canvases stretch nearly eight feet wide, holding tension and stillness in equal measure. The surface is built—like a city—through accumulation: graphite black sweeps, bone-white voids, and sharp flashes of mandarin orange that cut through like traffic lights at dusk.
Those orange gestures are deliberate. Not decorative, but disruptive—calling out like signals against concrete. They echo construction zones, graffiti tags, and the sudden beauty found in industrial decay. This isn’t a city romanticized—it’s a city studied, stripped back, and rebuilt in form.
Look closely and you’ll see fragments of paper embedded in the canvas. These act like forgotten posters or peeling walls—traces of something once public, now repurposed. Keatley doesn’t smooth over the surface; she exposes it. Each tear, each fissure, becomes a record of wear, movement, and memory.
The composition resists clarity. Lines loop, collide, pause. Like walking New York’s streets, there’s no single path—only crossings. Rhapsody in Graphite invites us to experience the architecture of emotion through the language of the urban: grit, rhythm, repetition, and rupture.
This is abstraction rooted in place. Not a skyline, but what lies beneath it.”