Richard Keen III shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Bold Journey: Richard, so good to connect and we’re excited to share your story and insights with our audience. There’s a ton to learn from your story, but let’s start with a warm up before we get into the heart of the interview. Are you walking a path—or wandering?
Richard Keen III: I believe I’m walking on a path. Walking on a path versus wandering reveals fundamental differences in how I approach life and creativity. While wandering might serve as a restorative practice—particularly useful during vacation or when specifically seeking unexpected discoveries—I find profound value in being able to see a path or destination and move purposefully toward it. This path-oriented mindset demonstrates my clarity of vision, intentionality, and ability to translate goals into meaningful action and progress. In my creative practice, this approach creates an ideal balance between purposeful direction and experimental discovery, allowing me to explore new materials or techniques within a focused framework rather than through aimless investigation. Even my most experimental work benefits from this underlying sense of direction because that exploration fits into my larger artistic trajectory. This self-aware approach to purposeful movement creates cohesive growth where discovery happens within intentional parameters, ensuring that even unexpected findings contribute to my evolving, unified vision rather than scattered wandering.
Bold Journey: Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Richard Keen III: I grew up in a blue collar family from eastern Pennsylvania. As a boy we moved to the Midwest out in Elkhart, Indiana where farm fields and factory buildings were abundant. At an early age I gravitated towards music and art, and by the time I was a junior in high school, I was focused on going to college for art. After undergraduate school and graduate school, I taught art in private and public schools, followed by becoming a commercial diver, which helped offer me more time to make art and also became the major influence on my work. Last fall, after 22 years of diving, my wife and I decided it was time to hang that day job up and see if I could live as an artist without a day job.
I have lived and worked in Maine since 1999. My visual art is abstract and explores the connections between place and perception through bold color, geometric forms, and the merging of natural and built environments. I earned a BFA from Millikin University and an MA from S.U.N.Y. Albany. My artistic vision, influenced by coastal landscapes and my experience as a commercial diver, is reflected in works held in public and private collections worldwide and featured in the U.S. State Department’s Art in Embassies program. I have received grants from the Maine Arts Commission, the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, and Rhode Island Sea Grant. My solo exhibitions have been presented at the Midwest Museum of American Art, the Garage Art Center in Queens, Moss Galleries in Portland, and the Zillman Art Museum in Bangor. I also show with Anita Rogers Gallery and The Painting Center in New York City, along with Courthouse Gallery in Ellsworth, ME. In addition to my studio practice, I have completed multiple public art commissions, including large-scale murals for educational institutions and community spaces. My work has been reviewed in Art New England, Portland Press Herald, Maine Home + Design, Dispatch Magazine, Fresh Paint Magazine, and Studio Visit Magazine.