KEENE.STUDIO is not a conventional studio, nor a singular practice. It exists as a conceptual and creative framework — a place where work unfolds across time rather than toward a fixed outcome.
At its core, KEENE.STUDIO is shaped by displacement: geographic, emotional, and generational. It acknowledges that creative lives are rarely linear, and that meaning is often formed through interruption, pause, and return rather than steady progression. Within this space, photography, painting, reflection, memory, and lived experience are allowed to coexist without hierarchy or pressure to resolve into a single identity.
For Annelize Bester, KEENE.STUDIO functions as a way of gathering a lifelong relationship with creativity — one that has moved across countries, disciplines, and states of immersion and distance. It holds the understanding that art can be a tether to life itself, particularly during moments of disconnection, and that continuity does not require constant production, only sustained attentiveness.
KEENE.STUDIO also carries forward an inherited artistic lineage through Tobias Keene, whose practice is grounded in generations of painters for whom art was not an abstraction but a daily discipline. Within the studio’s framework, lineage is not treated as legacy in the celebratory sense, but as responsibility — a continuation shaped by time, context, and personal reckoning rather than repetition.
Together, these parallel trajectories form the ethos of KEENE.STUDIO is a place where creative lives are honored as long arcs rather than portfolios, where returning is as meaningful as arriving, and where work is understood not as a destination, but as something lived alongside time.
KEENE.STUDIO
KEENE.STUDIO exists to hold creative lives over time.
It acknowledges displacement as a formative condition, not a deficit.
It accepts that work unfolds through return, pause, and re-entry rather than linear progress.
We believe continuity does not require constant production.
Attention is enough.
So is waiting.
Lineage is carried forward not through imitation, but through responsibility —by meeting inherited forms with present time, lived experience, and restraint.
KEENE.STUDIO values long arcs over outcomes, presence over visibility,
and making as something lived alongside time, not apart from it.
TOBIAS KEENE
MEDIUM
Working primarily in oil, Keene’s paintings engage with presence, restraint, and psychological stillness. His approach reflects an ongoing dialogue with classical figurative traditions while remaining attentive to the quiet tensions of contemporary life.
WORK
His work carries forward an inherited sensibility without nostalgia, emphasizing craft, attention, and continuity across time rather than stylistic reinvention.
ABOUT STUDIO
KEENE.STUDIO is a framework for Keene. The painter approaches painting as a long-form commitment—held across time, informed by lineage, and resistant to acceleration or spectacle.
CO-FOUNDER, ARTIST
Tobias Keene is a co-founder of KEENE . STUDIO and a participating artist. His practice contributes a multigenerational figurative painting lineage and informs the studio’s emphasis on continuity, discipline, and long-form artistic practice.
INFLUENCES
Keene’s work is informed by the quiet authority of Vermeer and Rembrandt, whose command of light, restraint, and psychological presence continues to shape his approach to figurative painting. Equally formative were the lived influences of his father, Arthur Keene, and his grandfather, Van Art, for whom painting was a daily, disciplined practice. His stepmother, Karen Keene, further shaped his visual sensibility through her work in costume and theatrical construction, reinforcing an understanding of form, surface, and presentation rooted in craft and continuity.
KEENE . STUDIO
KEENE . STUDIO exists to hold creative lives over time.
It acknowledges displacement as a formative condition, not a deficit.
It accepts that work unfolds through return, pause, and re-entry rather than linear progress.
We believe continuity does not require constant production.
Attention is enough.
So is waiting.
Lineage is carried forward not through imitation, but through responsibility —by meeting inherited forms with present time, lived experience, and restraint.
KEENE . STUDIO values long arcs over outcomes, presence over visibility,
and making as something lived alongside time, not apart from it.
ANNELIZE BESTER
A FLUENCY IN TIME-BASED PERCEPTION
Her work reflects continuity forged through movement rather than inheritance, shaped by sustained attention, immersion, and an evolving relationship with time and place.
WORK
His work carries forward an inherited sensibility without nostalgia, emphasizing craft, attention, and continuity across time rather than stylistic reinvention.
KEENE . STUDIO
KEENE . STUDIO is a framework through which Bester present creativity as a long-form practice—held across time, shaped through movement, and resistant to urgency or resolution.
CO-FOUNDER, ARTIST
Annelize Bester is a co-founder of KEENE . STUDIO and a participating artist. She initiates and stewards long-form, collaborative projects that engage questions of structure, time, and viability beyond representation.
PROJECTS
KEENE . STUDIO distinguishes between artists whose practices unfold over time and contributors whose involvement is specific to completed projects. Contributors such as Jed Leiber, Michel Cavro and The Children of Botswana are acknowledged for their integral role within particular works, without extending authorship beyond the life of the project.