KEELEY, Shelagh

ca. 1993

Photo-transfer and gouache on Rives BFK

43 1/2 x 30"

A recurrent reference of Sheelagh Keelys work across several media is the body and the process of healing. She alludes to this in her work, Dendrobium nobile with Egyptian Bed through the juxtaposition of an empty bedsymbolically a place of convalescence and recoverywith a genus of plant that is traditionally used in Chinese medicine. This drawing is part of a much larger series that the artist executed over an almost a ten-year span starting in the late 1980s. Keely was deeply affected by the devastation wrought by the AIDS epidemic. Her drawings from this series are an attempt to remake an anatomical book or manual, and in so doing make sense of the body, especially its fragility and vulnerability.

ca. 1993

KEELEY, Shelagh

Canadian, b. 1954

Gift of Lillian and Jon Lovelace

2010.001.004