Robert A. Ketchens invites you this Saturday
By Meliqueica Meadows
Of the St. Louis American
Robert A. Ketchens is a local artist who has been hard at work in his studio for nearly a year creating paintings he is anxious to share with the public. On Sunday, August 21 from 2-6 p.m. he will host an open house in his downtown studio, 1627 Washington Ave. #201, where art enthusiasts will have the opportunity to meet Ketchum and discuss his work.
A native of New Orleans, Ketchens began his career as a medical illustrator for the U.S. Army in Biloxi, Mississippi. In 1976 he was sent to work at the USAF Hospital in Wiesbade, Germany, where he spent four years watching surgeons and creating intricate sketches of their work. While in Germany, he had the opportunity to take a fine art class which forever changed the course of his career.
“I took a painting course from a local German artist who really turned me on to fine arts,” Ketchens said. Ketchens quit his job as a medical illustrator and became what he jokingly calls a “starving artist.”
“I’m primarily a socialist, I guess, when it comes to what moves me,” Ketchens said. “I try to paint those things I feel passionate about. Sometimes it’s a current event or sometimes it’s a current event that reminds me of something in the past.”
A current event that stirred his imagination was the recent visits of Bill Cosby and Michael Eric Dyson. Their ongoing debate inspired the oil-on-canvas piece Wanted: A Return to the Village (Cosby vs. Dyson).
“It is reflective of both their arguments,” Ketchens said of the piece. “They were both on the extreme, but to me it was that middle ground that we lost, and that’s what this message is all about. It’s the village that we lost that really needs to come back.”
In the painting, an African-American woman is surrounded by the images of anonymous faces as she quilts. Ketchens said the images represent the everyday people who continue the struggle for equal rights.
“In schools we celebrate Harriet Tubman and the big names, but it was small people like the quilters who quilted messages and directions for the movement,” he said. “They were a major part of making it happen, so it’s the everyday people that need to get involved and bring the village back today.”
For more information about the showing, call the artist at (314) 496-3747.
