Emily Keyishian

Emily Keyishian was raised in New Jersey and New York City to a mixed family of Armenians from Turkey and Jews from the Ukraine. She has been creating professionally in NJ, NYC, and CA since 1997. She taps into the psychological with her work, delving into what is familiar: the dark, uneven spaces, the brambles, the chaos of nature, the fortunate accidents, the involuntary painting around us. She embraces being flexible to what unfolds on the canvas and allowing it to inform the flow of her work. For many years, she focused on female abstract forms, delving into her own history of family dysfunction to try and tame to make sense of it. The abstract works touch on the inner turmoil of things that seem to not belong, of being overgrown or out of place, relating to her own feelings of displacement and diaspora, being forced off or out and no longer having a native land. Being in the US and never feeling quite settled on either coast, she realized this was part of her need to understand that fitting in or losing oneself in that melting pot in is not the goal, that retaining our heritage our language is what keeps us rooted as best we can in a world where people are constantly being displaced because of forces outside their control. Working within these parameters to allow an explosion of color and light on the canvas to invite the viewer in to experience the many layers of what each piece brings.