June Featured Artist: Keith Lenaburg

Kei­th Lenaburg is a con­tem­po­rary fine artist who lives and works in San­ta Bar­bara, CA. He dis­cov­ered ear­ly on that cre­at­ing art is an essen­tial part of his hap­pi­ness, and chose to fol­low his pas­sion by earn­ing a Bach­e­lor of Fine Arts with an empha­sis in paint­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San­ta Barbara.

Kei­th start­ed devel­op­ing his artis­tic skills at the age of four through pen­cil draw­ings. In junior high and high school, his art class­es gave him access to a wider array of art sup­plies, and he start­ed explor­ing oth­er medi­ums such as acrylics, pas­tels, col­ored pen­cils, and pens. To this day, Kei­th enjoys work­ing in a vari­ety of media and chal­leng­ing him­self to learn new cre­ative process­es. He spe­cial­izes in abstract mod­ern art, reverse glass paint­ings, and col­ored pen­cil draw­ings. In par­tic­u­lar, Kei­th loves to cre­ate func­tion­al art, tak­ing items such as clocks, coast­ers, or mir­rors and turn­ing them into unique works of art.

Kei­th cre­ates beau­ti­ful pieces of con­tem­po­rary abstract art by using dif­fer­ent pour­ing tech­niques and then apply­ing nature’s forces to them. Some pieces are spun or tilt­ed to cre­ate the desired effect, while oth­ers are cre­at­ed sole­ly by grav­i­ty and the inter­ac­tion between paints of dif­fer­ent den­si­ties. Some pieces are cre­at­ed almost instant­ly, while oth­ers take hours or even days to come to final form. In many pieces, he uses metal­lic paint, which gives the pieces depth and makes col­ors look dif­fer­ent depend­ing on how the light hits them.

In addi­tion, Kei­th has devel­oped a tech­nique that trans­forms ordi­nary pho­tos into a work of art, using acrylic paint to cre­ate the reverse image on the back side of the glass and incor­po­rat­ing a paper inlay to give the piece added dimen­sion. From a dis­tance, the result­ing mono­chro­mat­ic piece looks like a clear image of the sub­ject, but as you step clos­er, you see that the image is formed from abstract shapes.

Final­ly, Kei­th spe­cial­izes in col­ored pen­cil draw­ings. These pieces show­case his metic­u­lous atten­tion to detail. He uses vibrant col­ors, many lay­ers, and expert blend­ing to achieve pho­to­re­al­is­tic results.