Claudia Keep

Parker Gallery is proud to present Water, Water, Everywhere, a solo exhibition by Claudia Keep, her second at the gallery.

Known for her paintings drawn from a personal archive of photographs, Keep here turns her sustained attention to a single elemental subject: water. Conveying the intimacy of keen observation, Keep explores water in many manifestations–river swimmers, ocean waves, clouds illuminated at sunset, and afternoon coffee. The show takes its title from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 1834 long-form poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in which a cursed sailor bears the weight of an albatross bird around his neck, and can only be freed through a sincere appreciation of life in all its forms. In Keep’s paintings, water sparkles wondrously, and reconnects us to the enchantment of our familiar world.

Keep returns repeatedly to scenes and subjects that have sustained her practice—a glass of water on a patterned table cloth, rain-spattered road ways—continuously drawing the viewer into micro experiences that feel nostalgic and voyeuristic simultaneously. Rendered in oil on masonite, the paintings preserve the artist’s poignant perception into quotidian moments. Through vernacular subject matter that eschews fixed meaning, Keep reveals a poetic, diaristic relationship to the small encounters that form our world.

The exhibition features five multi-panel paintings, a recent development in Keep’s practice. The panoramic format heightens the immersive quality of her compositions, which can veer into abstraction in her depictions of moving water. Keep’s all-over compositions seem to freeze the memory of an experience. Across all Keep’s work, sensation is at the forefront, reminding us how it feels to look at the world.

Claudia Keep (b. 1993 in Low Moor, VA) lives and works in New York, NY. She received her BFA from Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, PA. Recent solo exhibitions include New York at MARCH, New York, NY (2025); Shimmering Waves at LMDS, Shanghai, China (2024); Somehow, Somewhere, Someway at Galerie Marguo, Paris, France (2024); In Bed at 12.26, Dallas, TX (2024); Almanac at Parker Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2023); Aubade at March, New York, NY (2022); Day In, Day Out at Tif Sigfrids, Athens, GA (2022); Claudia Keep at Tops Gallery, Memphis, TN (2021); Night Moves at March, New York, NY (2021); John’s Friends at Galerie Ulysses, Vienna, Austria (2019); and Day in Maine at UK Medical Center Gallery, Lexington, KY (2019). Keep has also exhibited in group exhibitions Early Bird at Palo Gallery, New York, NY (2025); Hubba Hideout at Club Rhubarb, New York NY (2025); Southern Democratic at The Carnegie, Covington, KY (2024); Une Chambre ́A Soi at Chateau Lacoste, Provence, France (2024); Thank you, I'm rested now. I'll have the lobster today, thank you at Pangée, Montreal, Canada; This Must Be The Place at Totah, New York, NY (2024); Clairvoyance at Shrine, New York, NY (2023); Spring at Primary, Miami, FL (2023); Night, light at Cob Gallery, London, UK (2023); The Midnight Hour at scroll / The Hole, New York, NY (2022); When the Sun Loses Its Light at Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, CA (2022); Small Paintings at Venus Over Manhattan, New York, NY (2022); The Language of Flowers at Reyes Finn, Detroit, MI (2021); The Lonely Ones at Fortnight Institute, New York, NY (2021); The Blues at The Painting Center, New York, NY (2020); Lean Out the Window at Auxier Kline, New York, NY (2020); and The Missing Half-Second at Ablebaker Contemporary, Portland, ME (2019).