JAKE THE RIPPER
Jake Keeler’s Heavy Metal, Horror Movies and Huge Musky
I met Jake Keeler halfway through college, meaning soon we will have known each other for 20 years. That can signify many things, but it certainly means I’ve been digging his paintings for a long time. Back in college they were usually bigger. Often they involved entire sheets of plywood covered with collaged images and found objects glued or bolted to the surface then blasted with spray paint, drenched in oils and acrylics and scrawled with markers. They were frantic, sprawling works that amalgamated influences from hip-hop, cartooning, graffiti, skateboarding, science fiction and heavy metal in dense layers of imagery and textures. Even then there were plenty of skulls and horns, and sometimes actual deer skulls—the result of family hunting trips in Benton County, MN.
Growing up, if Keeler wasn’t drawing, he was hunting and fishing. He managed to squeeze in bird hunting and fishing with his family even when he was in grad school. Sometime after he and wife Lucretia moved back to Saint Paul, he got interested in flyfishing. Like many of us, he fell into it hard, and a few years later, fish begin to appear in his work...
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