Laura Kay Keeling

Trumpet Trumpet 02

Digital collage

“I have always been attracted to the wonders of the natural world, so it would come as no surprise that natural imagery plays a large role throughout all of my works. I’m incredibly interested in how we form connections and how we are impacted by what is around us. In 2018, a traumatic accident occurred that left myself and my family feeling like we were missing the glue that had held us together. This took place at a location I have spent my whole life visiting and is very near and dear to my heart.

Thinking about the people and places we are connected to, how can we honor those cherished memories and moments in time? I think about reciprocal care and how one might engage and interact with other humans, plants/animals, nature, and the land—and what the relationship of caring for each other looks like.”

— Laura Kay Keeling

About the artist

Laura Kay Keeling

Laura Kay Keeling is a self taught Toronto-based artist whose work encompasses analog photography / video, collage and installation based projects. From a young age, Laura could be found searching for stones and other gifts from nature, exploring and listening to birds songs as well as taking photos on disposable cameras. Laura stepped away from artistic endeavours while in at University but around 2010 picked up a camera again and fell in love. Laura enjoys exploring and playing with different analog cameras and types of film. One of the things she loves most about analog photography is that “you never know what you’re going to get” and that it's a version of a captured moment in time. Laura began playing with collage in 2015 and from there created her first full series of collage works titled HOT ROCKS which she was selected to exhibit as one of ten “Untapped Artists” at Artist Project in Toronto in 2017. Throughout her work, she seeks to understand how we form connections with each other and with nature. She has been exploring and unpacking grief while examining concepts related to the visitor as spoken about in Rumi’s Poem 'The Guest House'. She has also been thinking about how we capture and cherish memories and moments in time while considering elements related to reciprocal care, in how one might interact and engage with other humans, plants / animals as well as how the artist cares for materials throughout the creation of artistic works. In thinking more about these concepts, she has begun to shift her practice to include elements from plants and flowers that she has grown or has foraged from other folks garden clippings. She scans and utilizes recently cut, dried and pressed flowers in her digital collages a new series of which will be prominently featured in her upcoming exhibition titled The Advantages of Tender Loving Care. Other recent accomplishments include being selected to participate in the Akin Studio Program at MOCA in Toronto (2019-2020), her piece titled A Diamond Is Forever aka what do we have here? Was selected by Partial Gallery to be exhibited at the Daegu Art Fair in South Korea (2019) and most recently, being selected to exhibit When It Gets Dark, I Have Shallow Breath in DesignTO’s curated exhibition titled Exchange Piece (2021).