Yevgenia Keller is a multidisciplinary abstract artist with a passion for teaching people how to understand the language of art. She started her art career long before consciously accepting the title of artist.
She used to believe her first art teacher was her father, who taught her the basics of scale, proportion and perspective. But, that’s not the truth. Her first art instructor was really her mother.
That is who introduced Yevgenia to the healing power of a simple line drawing. With three circles, a squiggly line, and a self-professed utter lack of artistic talent her mother calmed an inconsolable toddler who missed her father because he was away on a business trip. From that day onward, drawing daddy became not only a tradition but an absolute necessity if the child, or the rest of the household, was to get any sleep before his return.
Since those days, art became the coping mechanism for getting through school lectures, lonely teen years, and waiting through the tedium on cancer treatments.
In her teens, the weekly The Anne Tannenbaum Gallery School and summer art camps were the highlight of her artistic education. Skills put to good use painting the high school door black the day after prom. That was both an annual graduating class tradition, and a rite of passage. A sort of philosophical meditative reflective exercise reminding her that the process is always more significant than the outcome because the outcome will just get painted over to make way for the next wave of brushes from other people with just as many hopes, dreams and insecurities. The final product is not the main event for any artist.
In school, coming from the practicality of a solid Eastern European immigrant upbringing, the career path could never be visual art. So it became graphic design and later the business of printing. But her love of art, though shoved into a dark shameful corner, never vanished.
The volume of work mounted, stored on so many surfaces and in so many places that the only way to keep track was to throw them up on Instagram.
But the Universe said no. Enough of the hiding. Enough of the excuses and the self-doubt. In 2024, Yevgenia started doing what Dini Petty told her to do: wear her crown. It took the better part of a year, and then there was the pause for cancer. At this point most people feel the need to offer an apology, like the cancer was their fault or something. But really it was a blessing in many ways. It was liberating. It was a sort of death that you get to rise like a phoenix from. The boobs were a small price to pay for the permission to unapologetically call herself an artist and to stop pretending like any other career path was anything other than an excuse to avoid getting serious.
Currently, Yevgenia Keller is working several collections, building her gallery presence, taking on commission work including medium and large size murals, and offering art classes.
The art classes do deserve a mention of their own. They aren’t your typical learn to draw or paint sessions. All the basics and fundamentals are included but the focus is a more wholistic one. She teaches people how to find their creative voice and how to apply artistic fundamentals to that voice. She helps people overcome obstacles to their creative journeys.
While her chosen genre is abstract art, Yevgenia has a deep appreciation for all art forms: music, dance, theatre, film, photography, sculpture, visual art on any medium… all of it has a place under the sun. What matters is the language of art, and that is something that Yevgenia Keller believes connects us all.