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Featured Guest:
Keith Gamache Fine Artist, keithgamache.com Art Educator, South Side High School Published February 16, 2026 In this episode of Wisdom for Wannabes, host Jackie Morreale interviews Keith Gamache, fine artist and art educator in Rockville Centre Schools in Long Island, New York. They discuss topics such as the importance of art education, the impact of technology on teaching, and personal experiences in the art world. Jackie expresses gratitude for Keith's influence as an art teacher, while Keith shares insights into his creative process and teaching philosophy. The conversation also touches on personal growth, the role of technology in art, and the significance of maintaining authenticity in creative endeavors. Listen to/watch the full podcast recording, or read the transcript below: |
Full Interview with Keith Gamache:
"Think, Look, Care (T.L.C.). If you can do those things while you're making your art, you're going to make good art." - Keith Gamache (Wisdom for Wannabes episode 40, 01:07:22)
Great quotes from the interview with Keith Gamache:
(More great quotes throughout the transcript in blue below.)
- On Art Education and Advice: "You're going to be a successful artist because you care."
- On Personal Growth Through Art: "I like making stuff. I feel more comfortable saying that than painting even or sculpting."
- On Balancing Tradition and Innovation: "Once upon a time, people were like, oh, no, the camera is bad. It's going to take away creativity. And it didn't take away creativity. It changed the way people painted."
- On the Role of Technology: "I feel the same thing is going to happen with AI. There's going to be bad AI use, but then there'll also be some extremely clever and ingenious things done."
- On Art as a Reflection of Society: "The first one was Social Distancing and the second one was Isolated Painting. Those paintings were both chosen."
(More great quotes throughout the transcript in blue below.)
Paintings by Keith Gamache, www.keithgamache.com
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Key Takeaways:
1. Art as a Lifelong Journey: Keith emphasizes the importance of continuous learning and growth in art, encouraging artists to embrace their unique journeys and experiences. 2. The Role of Technology in Art: Both Jackie and Keith discuss how technology, like AI and digital tools, can enhance creativity but should be used thoughtfully to maintain authenticity. 3. Teaching Philosophy: Keith shares his teaching philosophy of "Think, Look, Care," highlighting the importance of engaging with the world, being thoughtful, and caring deeply about one's work. 4. Balancing Tradition and Innovation: The conversation explores the balance between traditional art techniques and modern innovations, encouraging artists to find their own path. 5. Personal Growth Through Art: Jackie and Keith discuss how art can be a tool for personal growth and self-expression, allowing individuals to explore and understand themselves better. |
“Firefly” (34” x 26.25”) by Keith Gamache (2025).
Oil pastel on Masonite pegboard.
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6. The Impact of Mentorship: Keith reflects on the influence of mentors in his life and the importance of providing thoughtful, personalized feedback to students.
7. Art as a Reflection of Society: The discussion touches on how art can capture and reflect societal changes, such as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. 8. Encouraging Creativity in Education: Keith emphasizes the need to inspire students to enjoy learning and find joy in creative expression, even in challenging environments. 9. The Importance of Authenticity: Both speakers stress the value of staying true to oneself and one's artistic vision, rather than chasing trends or external validation. 10. Art as a Collaborative Process: The conversation highlights the collaborative nature of art, whether through mentorship, teaching, or engaging with the broader artistic community. |
“Timber” (19" x 29.25") by Keith Gamache (2026). Oil pastel on Masonite pegboard.
Interview Transcript:
Jackie Morreale (00:00)
Hello, my name is Jackie Morreale and I am the host of Wisdom for Wannabes, a new podcast series that seeks to discover wise words in business, beauty, and betterment. Today's focus is the topic of beauty by way of the creation of art.
I have the pleasure to introduce our featured guest today: Fine artist, art educator, all around amazing human being, Keith Gamache. Welcome to Wisdom for Wannabes, Mr. Gamache.
Keith Gamache (00:26)
Thank you for having me, Jackie. Now, after almost 30 years, you can also call me Keith if you're comfortable doing so.
Jackie Morreale (00:27)
Thank you. I'm really going to have to pinch myself to call you Keith, but I will try.
As Keith, Mr. Gamache mentioned, I have had the pleasure of knowing you now since 1998. You taught me how to paint with oils when I was a student in your high school art class in Long Island, New York. I'm eternally grateful for this knowledge and for your patience and for the countless other students that you have brought art into their lives.
On behalf of all of us: Thank you very much for everything that you do every day!
Keith Gamache (01:00)
You're welcome. And for all the students like yourself who really truly cared about what they were making and listened to me and now all these years later thinking to invite me to your show, this podcast that you're doing, I appreciate it as well.
Jackie Morreale (01:17)
Absolutely. I really think that teachers are the foundation for everything in our life.
Not only are you an art educator for almost 32 years, Keith Gamache is an American artist whose work has been featured and lauded in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the Tri-State area and beyond since 1998. Keith's unique creative process draws inspiration from diverse influences, from the folk art charm of Pennsylvania Dutch hex signs, to the precision of early modernists like Mondrian, to the boldness of contemporary text-based painters like Robert Indiana.
Keith Gamache's work was featured in the 2022 Long Island Biennial at the Heckscher Museum of Art. His exhibition history includes solo shows such as Dot to Dot in 1999, at the Julian Scott Memorial Gallery in Vermont. What You Get is What You See from 2003, a Malloy College art gallery in New York.
And one of my favorites, because I was there to witness the portraits and photography every day, a Beard Grows in Brooklyn from 2005 in Long Island City in New York. Learn more about Keith Gamache and his art at: www.KeithGamache.com
Keith Gamache (02:32)
Thank you.
Jackie Morreale (02:33)
Thank you so much for joining us. It's crazy that we go back 30 years. I'm going to start with some real basic questions: What is your full name, where are you from, and where do you live and work now?
Keith Gamache (02:44)
I'm Keith Gamache. I'm originally from Massachusetts. When I first started teaching, I occasionally still had my accent. Usually came out when I was a little frustrated or pressed for time, when students came in one time looking for something to color with for one of their lab reports.
I turned and said, there's a box of ‘maccas’ (i.e. markers) on the windowsill and every head in the room turned because they had never heard me talk like that before. I'm originally from Massachusetts, a very small town, Berkeley. Then I came to New York to go to NYU for undergrad. I've been in New York ever since, living in lots of different places. Throughout that whole time, I've been teaching at South Side High School in Rockville Centre, NY. I started teaching at South Side in 1994 and ‘95.
Jackie Morreale (03:26)
Amazing. So you've done the whole New York City boroughs and Long Island tour?
Keith Gamache (03:35)
For the longest time I had a studio in Long Island City, Queens. That was from 1999 until 2010 when we moved out to our current home. We bought this property because there's a barn at the back of the property which is pretty unique for this part of Nassau County. It was supposed to be my studio. It's like we're buying the house so that that's my studio.
Now, there are lots of bikes in there and a lot of storage, but my power tools are out there. I'll do framing, some preliminary stuff, but for the most part, I do my painting at different spots inside the house. I also feel that, and also just being closer to the family.
Jackie Morreale (04:03)
Where there is air conditioning and heat, right? Those kinds of comforts.
Keith Gamache (04:22)
Yes, and so that I'm not detached, and asked, Where’s Dad? He's out in the barn. I'm here in the house. I can wash my brush and help with whatever you need to do.
Jackie Morreale (04:28)
Wow. You live in Long Island and you have a barn! That's amazing. At first, I thought you meant there was a barn in Long Island City and I was going to say, I've never heard of that. Although I know people do have chickens in Brooklyn. So where there's a will, there's a way to have a farm. So, tell us what do you do, and what is your passion?
Keith Gamache (04:39)
I'm a high school art teacher. I've been teaching art at South Side High School for 32 years in a lot of different classes. When you were there, I was mostly teaching painting and drawing, advanced painting and drawing, IB art. With some changes in faculty in the department growing, I started to teach sculpture and ceramics and that actually became the bulk of my teaching for the longest time along with IB art.
Eight years ago, I started teaching some computer programming. The school started a computer science program. They weren't going to hire somebody from the outside. The principal asked if there were any volunteers and I raised my hand saying, I liked computer programming but I haven't done any since my freshman and sophomore year of high school. But if you want it to be a more creative approach, and you want more like my art teaching than something else. I was somewhat hoping he would go, Keith, thanks for volunteering, but we'll give this to somebody else. But it became more like a, Tag! you're it. I found myself learning a lot of new material, even taught AP computer science the last two years. But now with some more changes to our art program, and they have hired somebody with an actual computer science background now. I am full-time art teacher again, teaching painting and drawing and IB art. It's coming full circle now which is really fun.
Jackie Morreale (06:09)
Good for you. I love that they took your volunteering for that gig in computer science seriously, because I really think that applying the skills that you have as a fine artist is great. We were so lucky to have a few hours of your day to impart that wisdom on us because the education that you provide as a fine artist is amazing. To put that level of creativity towards solving problems in terms of computer science and the opportunities that are there is an incredible opportunity for the kids. So, did anybody develop an app based on your class that has gone to make billions of dollars at this point?
Keith Gamache (06:57)
No big apps made yet. I have taught some brilliant kids. One of my biggest wishes is the very first group that I taught in computer science: I wish I could teach them again, knowing what I learned over those years. To a couple of those kids, I just want to say: Thank you for not making me feel dumb in front of the other kids, because they were definitely more advanced and more sophisticated than me. But their learning skills and their human skills were so good that they still knew that I had things to offer.
Even though they might have known the syntax better than me, in some cases, even the logic, when they were running into problems or needed just help with ideas or developing things, they would still come to me. It's beautiful working and teaching an environment like that, where I didn't feel like I had to be the smartest person in the room. They, at only 16, 17 years old, were also mature enough to realize that I cared about them and their learning and could still offer stuff for them.
The last eight years of working in computer science was a lot of fun for me. When you're in the same building, too, for so long, having different experiences within that place. It helps to keep learning fresh and your enthusiasm fresh and also getting to teach different kind of types of students too. It was positive.
Jackie Morreale (08:22)
It almost sounds like you built a multifaceted team? If you're coming in with the creative genius that you have, then you have these kids that are 16, 17 years old who grew up with technology. It's just natural for them to know coding languages and logic, right? What an interesting thing to take somebody with a creative skill set and surround you with this think tank of tech thinkers, and just to put that together, sounds like a dream team.
Keith Gamache (09:01)
Yeah. I really appreciate the administration too for entrusting me and supporting me and getting me the training that I did need to do it. A lot of times at my son’s swim practice, I was up in the bleachers with my laptop, going through lessons over and over again, trying to master that before I would be in there delivering it to the students.
Jackie Morreale (09:23)
You are so humble, Mr. Gamache. I'm going to keep calling you, Mr. Gamache, because that's what you'll always be to me. I'm sure that they got a lot out of it, and I think that you can teach anything.
You have so many things that you do, but what is your passion? If you could do just one thing and be very happy with it all day long, what would that be?
Keith Gamache (09:27)
I like to say, I like making stuff. I feel more comfortable saying that than painting or sculpting. Part of that is the appreciation and respect that I have for what I really consider to be painterly painters. Even when I first started painting, so say late high school into early college, when I thought I was painting, I was really just coloring in drawings that I would make. I had a drawing background, I was good at drawing, and it wasn't until when I went off to work on my MFA and did my first residency at Vermont Studio Center, and I was really surrounded by painters - landscape painters and portrait painters. I would visit their studios, and I would see paintings were these living things that had layers of paint.
The artist would apply paint and then sometimes wipe it away because it wasn't good. They wouldn't draft everything precisely and then color it in. There are so many variations too in painter's processes that I learned so much just from watching and seeing and witnessing that.
So, I consider my passion to be making. I do work primarily, as you mentioned, on Masonite pegboard. I work largely with vinyl acrylic paints, I discovered along the way. Pearl Paint when it still existed. I actually went to the Pearl Paint that was behind the Pearl Paint store because they had these vinyl acrylic paints that were designed for use in the theater. The thing about these paints is, it's a very matte finish, but it's also highly durable.
That's why it was used for stages because it wouldn't have the reflectivity, but it could also get scratched without showing those scratches. I liked the velvety finish of it, and I started working with that and building it up in layers. I just started to make these patterns.
Painting circles around the holes, connecting the holes together by lines, different types of patterns for years. That's the way it stayed. Then I started to get more involved with text, imagery, thinking of them almost like counted cross stitch. Crafts have always been a big influence on my work as well. My passion is making things.
Jackie Morreale (11:59)
How long have you been making things?
Keith Gamache (12:01)
I've been making things since I was very small, thanks to mom and dad. You mentioned teachers being so important and our parents are our first teachers. My mother was a trained seamstress. She crocheted and knitted and sewed things when I was a kid. In the 70s, we didn't have all the stuff that we have now to entertain ourselves.
Sometimes we barely had TV. I remember waking up at 5:30 in the morning. When I turned on the TV, it would either be static or colored be the American flag on a pole. The Star-Spangled Banner would play, and then the first program would come on. I grew up in a rural area with a lot of boredom.
I think boredom is a gift, actually, that we have no patience for today.
Jackie Morreale (12:53)
Boredom – what is that for kids now? They're bored while they're scrolling and there is constant entertainment, but it's still boring, right? It's not the boring that you're talking about where there's no TV and you're in a rural setting and it's beautiful, but maybe you don't appreciate it at that point, because we don't have patience. And now we're just bombarded by noise.
Keith Gamache (12:56)
Yeah. My mom was home with us and it was like, Okay, you're bored. So she taught me how to knit. She taught me how to sew, and do crafts. My dad was a trained electrician, but never got his license. Whenever he would need to learn a new skill, he would go and help a contractor in the neighborhood. He would learn how to build something while he was doing the electrical work for him. Then my dad taught me how to build things. I was a Cub Scout growing up. One of my favorite things every year was making Pinewood Derby cars. My dad taught me how to sand everything meticulously and sort of coarse grit, finer grit, finer grit. My cars have like seven layers of spray paint on them.
Jackie Morreale (13:56)
Yarns, cars. I'm just thinking about your pegboards. There's even a sort of rhythm that's similar. Different medium, different purpose. I didn't know that you had that ‘maker’ family background. You could even whip stitch right on the sides of some sort of a craft. Embellishment, applique… I'm seeing where maybe some of the Connect the Dots painting inspirations came from.
Keith Gamache (14:19)
It's funny that you mentioned whip stitching. Before the peg boards, I had been working with corrugated cardboard. I was actually taking yarn and stringing it through the corrugations. I would cut out negative space shapes off the top layer and peel that away so you could see the lines of yarn underneath it. I was working with yarn and cardboard and I began using the pegboard as a way to mount the cardboard onto the pegboard, because it was sturdier and then fasten that onto the wall. I chose the pegboard itself because it also had holes in it so you could see the wall through the pegboard and that interaction of wall with painting was important to me.
I do like objects, and I think of my paintings very much as being objects. There are these sculptural qualities that I'm interested in. That's how the pegboards started. At the end of a summer residency, I had three more days left, but I finished all the grand stuff I was going to make. I had this batch of pegboard left, I cut them into these six-inch squares, and I just started freely and spontaneously painting, which free and spontaneous and art making for me don't always go hand in hand.
Jackie Morreale (15:37)
But that usually leads to some really amazing work, right? You didn't have to do it, you did it for fun.
Keith Gamache (15:39)
Yeah. And it was a lot of fun. I still have some of those kicking around in different areas. Whenever I find myself getting too tight or rigid or predictable, I'll run off to the studio and find where I have those cobbled away and be like, Time to get messy again or a little more playful again and let things happen.
Jackie Morreale (16:02)
I love the word ‘improvisational’. I saw that people have talked about your work as playful, and improvisational. That's so interesting that when you start to see it feeling too predictable, that you'll throw something in there from the past to sort of change direction and see where it goes.
Keith Gamache (16:18)
Yeah. Another thing I'll do, I use hand sanders to sand some of my surfaces and part of that is to get some qualities that I don't feel comfortable with.
I love ‘painterly paintings’ but when I make painterly marks myself, I start to cringe. By sanding and layering colors and then doing that, I can control how much I sand. I'll re-layer and sand again, and I'm comfortable with that. It does get to be this a certain amount of unpredictability, but then also I can control and play around with that as well.
Jackie Morreale (16:35)
You're painting vinyl acrylic onto the pegboard. You're sometimes, depending on the piece, focusing on the holes and the 3D dimension of that. Then you're sanding after painting. So you have this matte paint that's filling the space, and then you're sanding off layers of that to reveal layers that are underneath?
Keith Gamache (17:08)
Yeah, somewhat like that, historically. That's kind of thing.
When I said, these ‘painterly painters’. First, it's an idea. Then a lot of times I'll map it out on graph paper or dot grid paper. There's that sketch and that is a starting point, but once it gets on the board itself, it's not just, Follow the directions. It's not like a paint by number.
It is at that point more organic because once you get the scale shift. All of a sudden, it gets to be larger. Once the colors are there, it’s much more about relationships. It's more playful and intuitive at that point.
Jackie Morreale (17:48)
How many classes do you teach during the school day?
Keith Gamache (17:51)
It'll be five classes.
Jackie Morreale (17:54)
There is something to sharing and talking all the time that takes a lot of energy to do.
(Continued below)
Hello, my name is Jackie Morreale and I am the host of Wisdom for Wannabes, a new podcast series that seeks to discover wise words in business, beauty, and betterment. Today's focus is the topic of beauty by way of the creation of art.
I have the pleasure to introduce our featured guest today: Fine artist, art educator, all around amazing human being, Keith Gamache. Welcome to Wisdom for Wannabes, Mr. Gamache.
Keith Gamache (00:26)
Thank you for having me, Jackie. Now, after almost 30 years, you can also call me Keith if you're comfortable doing so.
Jackie Morreale (00:27)
Thank you. I'm really going to have to pinch myself to call you Keith, but I will try.
As Keith, Mr. Gamache mentioned, I have had the pleasure of knowing you now since 1998. You taught me how to paint with oils when I was a student in your high school art class in Long Island, New York. I'm eternally grateful for this knowledge and for your patience and for the countless other students that you have brought art into their lives.
On behalf of all of us: Thank you very much for everything that you do every day!
Keith Gamache (01:00)
You're welcome. And for all the students like yourself who really truly cared about what they were making and listened to me and now all these years later thinking to invite me to your show, this podcast that you're doing, I appreciate it as well.
Jackie Morreale (01:17)
Absolutely. I really think that teachers are the foundation for everything in our life.
Not only are you an art educator for almost 32 years, Keith Gamache is an American artist whose work has been featured and lauded in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the Tri-State area and beyond since 1998. Keith's unique creative process draws inspiration from diverse influences, from the folk art charm of Pennsylvania Dutch hex signs, to the precision of early modernists like Mondrian, to the boldness of contemporary text-based painters like Robert Indiana.
Keith Gamache's work was featured in the 2022 Long Island Biennial at the Heckscher Museum of Art. His exhibition history includes solo shows such as Dot to Dot in 1999, at the Julian Scott Memorial Gallery in Vermont. What You Get is What You See from 2003, a Malloy College art gallery in New York.
And one of my favorites, because I was there to witness the portraits and photography every day, a Beard Grows in Brooklyn from 2005 in Long Island City in New York. Learn more about Keith Gamache and his art at: www.KeithGamache.com
Keith Gamache (02:32)
Thank you.
Jackie Morreale (02:33)
Thank you so much for joining us. It's crazy that we go back 30 years. I'm going to start with some real basic questions: What is your full name, where are you from, and where do you live and work now?
Keith Gamache (02:44)
I'm Keith Gamache. I'm originally from Massachusetts. When I first started teaching, I occasionally still had my accent. Usually came out when I was a little frustrated or pressed for time, when students came in one time looking for something to color with for one of their lab reports.
I turned and said, there's a box of ‘maccas’ (i.e. markers) on the windowsill and every head in the room turned because they had never heard me talk like that before. I'm originally from Massachusetts, a very small town, Berkeley. Then I came to New York to go to NYU for undergrad. I've been in New York ever since, living in lots of different places. Throughout that whole time, I've been teaching at South Side High School in Rockville Centre, NY. I started teaching at South Side in 1994 and ‘95.
Jackie Morreale (03:26)
Amazing. So you've done the whole New York City boroughs and Long Island tour?
Keith Gamache (03:35)
For the longest time I had a studio in Long Island City, Queens. That was from 1999 until 2010 when we moved out to our current home. We bought this property because there's a barn at the back of the property which is pretty unique for this part of Nassau County. It was supposed to be my studio. It's like we're buying the house so that that's my studio.
Now, there are lots of bikes in there and a lot of storage, but my power tools are out there. I'll do framing, some preliminary stuff, but for the most part, I do my painting at different spots inside the house. I also feel that, and also just being closer to the family.
Jackie Morreale (04:03)
Where there is air conditioning and heat, right? Those kinds of comforts.
Keith Gamache (04:22)
Yes, and so that I'm not detached, and asked, Where’s Dad? He's out in the barn. I'm here in the house. I can wash my brush and help with whatever you need to do.
Jackie Morreale (04:28)
Wow. You live in Long Island and you have a barn! That's amazing. At first, I thought you meant there was a barn in Long Island City and I was going to say, I've never heard of that. Although I know people do have chickens in Brooklyn. So where there's a will, there's a way to have a farm. So, tell us what do you do, and what is your passion?
Keith Gamache (04:39)
I'm a high school art teacher. I've been teaching art at South Side High School for 32 years in a lot of different classes. When you were there, I was mostly teaching painting and drawing, advanced painting and drawing, IB art. With some changes in faculty in the department growing, I started to teach sculpture and ceramics and that actually became the bulk of my teaching for the longest time along with IB art.
Eight years ago, I started teaching some computer programming. The school started a computer science program. They weren't going to hire somebody from the outside. The principal asked if there were any volunteers and I raised my hand saying, I liked computer programming but I haven't done any since my freshman and sophomore year of high school. But if you want it to be a more creative approach, and you want more like my art teaching than something else. I was somewhat hoping he would go, Keith, thanks for volunteering, but we'll give this to somebody else. But it became more like a, Tag! you're it. I found myself learning a lot of new material, even taught AP computer science the last two years. But now with some more changes to our art program, and they have hired somebody with an actual computer science background now. I am full-time art teacher again, teaching painting and drawing and IB art. It's coming full circle now which is really fun.
Jackie Morreale (06:09)
Good for you. I love that they took your volunteering for that gig in computer science seriously, because I really think that applying the skills that you have as a fine artist is great. We were so lucky to have a few hours of your day to impart that wisdom on us because the education that you provide as a fine artist is amazing. To put that level of creativity towards solving problems in terms of computer science and the opportunities that are there is an incredible opportunity for the kids. So, did anybody develop an app based on your class that has gone to make billions of dollars at this point?
Keith Gamache (06:57)
No big apps made yet. I have taught some brilliant kids. One of my biggest wishes is the very first group that I taught in computer science: I wish I could teach them again, knowing what I learned over those years. To a couple of those kids, I just want to say: Thank you for not making me feel dumb in front of the other kids, because they were definitely more advanced and more sophisticated than me. But their learning skills and their human skills were so good that they still knew that I had things to offer.
Even though they might have known the syntax better than me, in some cases, even the logic, when they were running into problems or needed just help with ideas or developing things, they would still come to me. It's beautiful working and teaching an environment like that, where I didn't feel like I had to be the smartest person in the room. They, at only 16, 17 years old, were also mature enough to realize that I cared about them and their learning and could still offer stuff for them.
The last eight years of working in computer science was a lot of fun for me. When you're in the same building, too, for so long, having different experiences within that place. It helps to keep learning fresh and your enthusiasm fresh and also getting to teach different kind of types of students too. It was positive.
Jackie Morreale (08:22)
It almost sounds like you built a multifaceted team? If you're coming in with the creative genius that you have, then you have these kids that are 16, 17 years old who grew up with technology. It's just natural for them to know coding languages and logic, right? What an interesting thing to take somebody with a creative skill set and surround you with this think tank of tech thinkers, and just to put that together, sounds like a dream team.
Keith Gamache (09:01)
Yeah. I really appreciate the administration too for entrusting me and supporting me and getting me the training that I did need to do it. A lot of times at my son’s swim practice, I was up in the bleachers with my laptop, going through lessons over and over again, trying to master that before I would be in there delivering it to the students.
Jackie Morreale (09:23)
You are so humble, Mr. Gamache. I'm going to keep calling you, Mr. Gamache, because that's what you'll always be to me. I'm sure that they got a lot out of it, and I think that you can teach anything.
You have so many things that you do, but what is your passion? If you could do just one thing and be very happy with it all day long, what would that be?
Keith Gamache (09:27)
I like to say, I like making stuff. I feel more comfortable saying that than painting or sculpting. Part of that is the appreciation and respect that I have for what I really consider to be painterly painters. Even when I first started painting, so say late high school into early college, when I thought I was painting, I was really just coloring in drawings that I would make. I had a drawing background, I was good at drawing, and it wasn't until when I went off to work on my MFA and did my first residency at Vermont Studio Center, and I was really surrounded by painters - landscape painters and portrait painters. I would visit their studios, and I would see paintings were these living things that had layers of paint.
The artist would apply paint and then sometimes wipe it away because it wasn't good. They wouldn't draft everything precisely and then color it in. There are so many variations too in painter's processes that I learned so much just from watching and seeing and witnessing that.
So, I consider my passion to be making. I do work primarily, as you mentioned, on Masonite pegboard. I work largely with vinyl acrylic paints, I discovered along the way. Pearl Paint when it still existed. I actually went to the Pearl Paint that was behind the Pearl Paint store because they had these vinyl acrylic paints that were designed for use in the theater. The thing about these paints is, it's a very matte finish, but it's also highly durable.
That's why it was used for stages because it wouldn't have the reflectivity, but it could also get scratched without showing those scratches. I liked the velvety finish of it, and I started working with that and building it up in layers. I just started to make these patterns.
Painting circles around the holes, connecting the holes together by lines, different types of patterns for years. That's the way it stayed. Then I started to get more involved with text, imagery, thinking of them almost like counted cross stitch. Crafts have always been a big influence on my work as well. My passion is making things.
Jackie Morreale (11:59)
How long have you been making things?
Keith Gamache (12:01)
I've been making things since I was very small, thanks to mom and dad. You mentioned teachers being so important and our parents are our first teachers. My mother was a trained seamstress. She crocheted and knitted and sewed things when I was a kid. In the 70s, we didn't have all the stuff that we have now to entertain ourselves.
Sometimes we barely had TV. I remember waking up at 5:30 in the morning. When I turned on the TV, it would either be static or colored be the American flag on a pole. The Star-Spangled Banner would play, and then the first program would come on. I grew up in a rural area with a lot of boredom.
I think boredom is a gift, actually, that we have no patience for today.
Jackie Morreale (12:53)
Boredom – what is that for kids now? They're bored while they're scrolling and there is constant entertainment, but it's still boring, right? It's not the boring that you're talking about where there's no TV and you're in a rural setting and it's beautiful, but maybe you don't appreciate it at that point, because we don't have patience. And now we're just bombarded by noise.
Keith Gamache (12:56)
Yeah. My mom was home with us and it was like, Okay, you're bored. So she taught me how to knit. She taught me how to sew, and do crafts. My dad was a trained electrician, but never got his license. Whenever he would need to learn a new skill, he would go and help a contractor in the neighborhood. He would learn how to build something while he was doing the electrical work for him. Then my dad taught me how to build things. I was a Cub Scout growing up. One of my favorite things every year was making Pinewood Derby cars. My dad taught me how to sand everything meticulously and sort of coarse grit, finer grit, finer grit. My cars have like seven layers of spray paint on them.
Jackie Morreale (13:56)
Yarns, cars. I'm just thinking about your pegboards. There's even a sort of rhythm that's similar. Different medium, different purpose. I didn't know that you had that ‘maker’ family background. You could even whip stitch right on the sides of some sort of a craft. Embellishment, applique… I'm seeing where maybe some of the Connect the Dots painting inspirations came from.
Keith Gamache (14:19)
It's funny that you mentioned whip stitching. Before the peg boards, I had been working with corrugated cardboard. I was actually taking yarn and stringing it through the corrugations. I would cut out negative space shapes off the top layer and peel that away so you could see the lines of yarn underneath it. I was working with yarn and cardboard and I began using the pegboard as a way to mount the cardboard onto the pegboard, because it was sturdier and then fasten that onto the wall. I chose the pegboard itself because it also had holes in it so you could see the wall through the pegboard and that interaction of wall with painting was important to me.
I do like objects, and I think of my paintings very much as being objects. There are these sculptural qualities that I'm interested in. That's how the pegboards started. At the end of a summer residency, I had three more days left, but I finished all the grand stuff I was going to make. I had this batch of pegboard left, I cut them into these six-inch squares, and I just started freely and spontaneously painting, which free and spontaneous and art making for me don't always go hand in hand.
Jackie Morreale (15:37)
But that usually leads to some really amazing work, right? You didn't have to do it, you did it for fun.
Keith Gamache (15:39)
Yeah. And it was a lot of fun. I still have some of those kicking around in different areas. Whenever I find myself getting too tight or rigid or predictable, I'll run off to the studio and find where I have those cobbled away and be like, Time to get messy again or a little more playful again and let things happen.
Jackie Morreale (16:02)
I love the word ‘improvisational’. I saw that people have talked about your work as playful, and improvisational. That's so interesting that when you start to see it feeling too predictable, that you'll throw something in there from the past to sort of change direction and see where it goes.
Keith Gamache (16:18)
Yeah. Another thing I'll do, I use hand sanders to sand some of my surfaces and part of that is to get some qualities that I don't feel comfortable with.
I love ‘painterly paintings’ but when I make painterly marks myself, I start to cringe. By sanding and layering colors and then doing that, I can control how much I sand. I'll re-layer and sand again, and I'm comfortable with that. It does get to be this a certain amount of unpredictability, but then also I can control and play around with that as well.
Jackie Morreale (16:35)
You're painting vinyl acrylic onto the pegboard. You're sometimes, depending on the piece, focusing on the holes and the 3D dimension of that. Then you're sanding after painting. So you have this matte paint that's filling the space, and then you're sanding off layers of that to reveal layers that are underneath?
Keith Gamache (17:08)
Yeah, somewhat like that, historically. That's kind of thing.
When I said, these ‘painterly painters’. First, it's an idea. Then a lot of times I'll map it out on graph paper or dot grid paper. There's that sketch and that is a starting point, but once it gets on the board itself, it's not just, Follow the directions. It's not like a paint by number.
It is at that point more organic because once you get the scale shift. All of a sudden, it gets to be larger. Once the colors are there, it’s much more about relationships. It's more playful and intuitive at that point.
Jackie Morreale (17:48)
How many classes do you teach during the school day?
Keith Gamache (17:51)
It'll be five classes.
Jackie Morreale (17:54)
There is something to sharing and talking all the time that takes a lot of energy to do.
(Continued below)
"Insects" series paintings, by Keith Gamache:
Scarab, by Keith Gamache
Garden Tiger Moth, by Keith Gamache
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Firefly, by Keith Gamache
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Ladybug, by Keith Gamache
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(Continued)
Keith Gamache (17:59)
Yeah. Mentioning that made me think about the experience that I had at the Long Island Children's Museum, which the pieces behind me were from. Part of that show was also a residency at the museum.
One week, Monday to Friday, it was two workshops a day of kids and their parents coming to the museum. The first day was tons of fun and after that, I started to think this is what Broadway performers must feel like.
I even started to have more respect for Broadway performers. I had to look at it, I'm doing the same thing twice a day, but for these kids and their parents coming in, this is their one performance.
In my art classroom, every day is different, like we're moving on. There are different stages of the project.
Jackie Morreale (18:56)
Do you know how many students you've had over 32 years? I'm just curious.
Keith Gamache (19:01)
I once tried to figure it out, but then I gave up. You could just do rudimentary math and just go, well, I have about a 100 kids a year, and multiply that by 30. But there were some students I taught all four years, so that's not a new student. I taught virtually all students who took painting and drawing at least two out of the four years that they were at the school. So, it gets to be tricky. But I do know it's definitely thousands.
Jackie Morreale (19:32)
At least. You have the same kid, from ninth grade to 12th grade. Maybe, because you had the kid least two or three times, which is amazing. But you're really getting that kid at a different, unique stage in their life. So in a way, they are different, especially starting high school at ninth grade to a young adult who's graduating, and knows that they want to go into arts or knows that they want to do computer science or whatever. A different person.
Keith Gamache (19:45)
I've spent my whole career teaching 14- to 18-year-olds. But 14- to 18-year-olds in 2025 are different than the 14- to 18-year-olds in 1995. Mostly because of technology.
That's been a funny thing, to reflect upon and just to keep reminding myself of. It's also what helps to keep it fresh, too. Outside of the fact that everyone is an individual.
While there might be some universal things that teenagers go through from when you were in school to today, there are a lot of universal feelings.
Growing up, starting to push away from home and parents and friends and going off to college and those fears and those anxieties and some of that is very consistent and predictable, but with differences in technology, media, expectations.
It really is a remarkably different landscape in which I'm teaching as well.
Jackie Morreale (21:05)
Interesting. Do you feel that technology is improving the experience, since you have your finger on the pulse of the teenage student body in New York, at least, as a population?
Keith Gamache (21:17)
New York along with another number of other states have now at the highest levels of government, banned cell phones and personal devices in schools. I'm excited to see what that's going to look like. Our school's policy has been off and away, but there is also some flexibility with that. For instance, a Dell Chromebook takes horrible pictures. So, to have students document their work, I would always let them use their their own personal phone to take that looking at references, even though I couldn't stand it. I'm like, how can you look at that little picture on your little phone? I was like, please let me print out a full eight and half by 11. Yeah, No, Mr. Gamache, I'm fine.
At some points, I accept that too, because that is, I think, a generational difference. If they're comfortable doing it that way, why should I impose my antiquated paper ways?
Jackie Morreale (22:22)
Yeah, dinosaur age way of doing things. There was nothing like a computer in your pocket that could take the most amazing pictures and could search anything back then. The access to technology is very different.
Keith Gamache (22:34)
Your IB sketchbook was probably filled with black and white photocopies. We might have just gotten a color copier printer in the room, but ink and toner was so expensive. All of those things are different. And that's by and large, how I try to treat these changes that have happened, I try to not put them in competition against each other to be like, this one is better than that one. There are pros and cons to things. The ease of use is both awesome and scary.
There are things that you learn when you have to search for something. When you're able to just get it, well, that takes out, I don't want to say some of the fun, because when you're doing research and digging through stuff to get the right sources, it's time consuming. I don't think that the technology is inherently good or bad, but we do have to figure out how to use it effectively. So in my school, last year I started working on the AI committee because that's something that we're grappling with. I think progress is important. There's a lot that I'm skeptical of, that I don't like.
As an artist, too, the analogy I make is this:
Once upon a time, people were like, Oh, no, the camera is bad. It's going to take away creativity.
It didn't take away creativity. It changed the way people painted.
Then with computers, Oh, no, Photoshop is bad. It allows people to cheat. No, it changed the way people work.
I feel the same thing is going to happen with AI. There's going to be bad AI use, but then there'll also be some extremely clever and ingenious things done. It will speed up creativity for some people. It'll be like a collaborator.
I think as long as artists remember still that they're the human and they're in charge and they can determine how much they want to give over control to or maintain those I think are individual questions for artists and people to answer.
I do think as an educator, schools do have a responsibility to start to help guide students through using it in appropriate ways because it's not going to go away.
Jackie Morreale (25:02)
I think it's absolutely only going to get bigger and stronger and more used throughout our daily lives. The nice thing, I think, as an artist who's picked up a pen or a pencil or a paintbrush, is that taking it down to those basic elements where you're just making marks on paper, however you want to make them, whatever direction, abstract, realist, whatever.
It's a way of expressing yourself that's, it's not anti-technology, but it just brings you back to your roots somehow. So even if you're using the various AI apps to get inspiration or some way to enhance what you're doing as an artist, I think like you said, you're in charge and you have to take it back to your roots. And I like to get my hands dirty and feel that there is a difference between what you're getting out of an AI platform to what you're creating as a fine artist.
Keith Gamache (25:53)
Yeah. I think those tactile qualities are really important and for a lot of people and to not lose that. My work lends itself very well to digital applications. In Illustrator, I made grids with circles and I could click on them and change the colors of them. I started working that way for a little bit because it made sense.
It didn't last that long because I didn't enjoy working that way. Clicking and filling and changing colors on a screen with a computer is a lot different than dipping the paint in and doing this. The smell of the materials too. There are a lot of parts of making and experiencing art beyond just what you see. That's a part of the creators' motivation and what they get out of the process of making art.
Jackie Morreale (26:53)
For me, if I'm the observer and I'm trying to look at someone's art, I'm looking for those imperfections. I want to see the human behind the art. That's what I love. I do use Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, so Adobe programs, and I think they're great. But for the sake of creating art, yes, I don't want to just fill my circle in different colors that I've already grabbed swatches of. I want to see the depth of that stroke.
I recently went to the Norton Museum, here in West Palm Beach, and just got addicted to the older stuff, the impressionists. I saw a Monet after not seeing one for many years, and it just took my breath away. The human behind it who could barely see, who's trying to interpret water lilies in his backyard, and the chunkiness of the paint, and how it all comes together to one breathtaking composition.
Keith Gamache (27:44)
Yeah. You had asked me about Mondrian earlier and my initial investigations into Mondrian were over 20 years ago, very superficial and based largely on reproductions that I had seen and also very much visual. But then after seeing paintings in person and in reading and learning more about the process, he really was a painter. It's not like that blue was that blue from the beginning. That blue might have changed blueness several times as he was making that painting to get that right and perfect for him at that time.
Jackie Morreale (28:26)
Can you imagine Mondrian compared to Illustrator, a bunch of vectors, squares and lines that you can just thicken the stroke or you can change the blue color just with one click? Here's an artist who's formulating these perfect lines and perfect color from one side to the other. The skill set to create geometric work that I think we're both describing, who knows, maybe inspired some of this completely simplified perfected version of this in some of those Adobe programs.
Keith Gamache (28:59)
Even as you're saying that, you think about a designer and their use of the computer and there is something about the cleanliness and precision of it. But stuff that we never really see is how many times most likely did that person shift something the tiniest bit up, down, left, right or diagonal until it was like, No, that is the spot that that needs to be. I think that's one of the things that if you're not a creator yourself, you don't bring that kind of thoughtfulness to when you look at something to know that it didn't happen immediately.
Jackie Morreale (29:39)
The process is just different, right? You still have to have the eye. You still must have the skill set, know what you're going for. It's just different.
Keith Gamache (29:42)
Yeah. I think that's why, with a lot of AI stuff, people feel, because it does come out right there. Like the machine is able to make all this stuff.
Jackie Morreale (29:52)
Even images. It's crazy, right? Give it a couple little variables and ask it to create. It might even be good.
Keith Gamache (30:02)
It might even, yeah. Whenever I start to dabble with it and make things is I try to get it to make what I have pictured in my head. I can never be descriptive enough to get it right there. But then it might create images where I was just like, Wow, that's really neat that that happened. I never would have thought of that.
So can I use these things to put together? I don't look at that as much different from all the years before that, when a student would come up to me and go like, Mr. Gamache, what should I make?
Jackie Morreale (30:21)
Do people ask you that every single day? What should I make?
Keith Gamache (30:39)
It happens a lot, it's not new. It was happening when you were in school too. Then
I would never just say, well, Jackie, make this, because then that's not you. But it would be a process of usually questions, well, what did you make the last time? Or let's look at your last two or three pieces.
Jackie Morreale (30:57)
I remember you have this Socratic method to your art dialogues where you really are able to get a student to dig deep within to figure out for themselves what they want to do. That's so interesting. What should I do?
Keith Gamache (31:13)
Then is it, do they want to continue something that they've been doing, or have you hit the end of the road with that? Do you need something else? It's not just an about face. It's not looking around the room and ooh, there's a shiny object. Let me do that. But a conscious understanding of, well, I've been doing this for a while. I need something different, let me shift. Maybe a material remains consistent. A concept that you've been exploring gets to go through. I think like if creators use AI in a way to be that collaborator, especially if you are isolated. I'm not there at 8:30 at night to help out a student, so it being dialogue-based and not just accepting do this, then I think it can be positive.
Jackie Morreale (32:04)
Yes. As a professional who, thinks, I'm creative. I'm going to say I am creative. I've been creative.
Keith Gamache (32:16)
You are creative and you always were.
Jackie Morreale (32:38)
I miss having you there to say, Okay, this is the assignment. These are the parameters because sometimes giving you parameters it makes you be more creative in your thinking, and how you fit what you want to create to those parameters.
Certainly having a tight timeline always helps as well, at least for me, like the 90% of creation is happening in the last 10% of time. That's usually my process. It really takes such self-discipline to do that yourself. I think that students don't realize while they're going through the process that it really is a gift that you thought of this design prompt that really pushes them to create something that's relevant, beautiful, expresses themselves, all of the above, that when you're kind of faced with a blank paper as an adult who's trying to be creative, maybe you don't know where to start.
So having some guidance from somebody who's really open-minded like you and does have the patience to dialogue and figure out what's going on in the creative mind and how you enhance that student and their work is a gift.
Keith Gamache (33:25)
It also makes me chuckle. I will reveal this to you, that a number of times, I'm in my studio and I'm being my worst student.
I chuckle because then I go if I were teaching me right now, I would be very frustrated with what I'm doing because I'm being too precise or too precious.
What I need to do right now is just relax or stop or do more. Sometimes you get into something you want it to be a certain way and it's just not working or might be shutting down. Sometimes my art teacher voice comes in and helps to get me.
Jackie Morreale (33:59)
Remind yourself, yes. Distance yourself from it for a moment.
Keith Gamache (34:05)
In the classroom, it also helps me to sometimes step back and realize my student is just a human being going through the same artistic struggles that you go through. So just be patient and let them have the bad day, which is hard sometimes for a teacher, and as you know, as a parent, it can be hard to see our students and our children have that bad day, but a lot is learned from that there.
Jackie Morreale (34:32)
A bad day in the art room or a bad day in general with other stuff that's happening in their life?
Keith Gamache (34:38)
I was speaking about a bad art day, but that's the other reality to remember: All of my students have lives beyond the 40 minutes that I see them.
It could be stress about a test that they're taking the next period or, things that are going on at home.
We've talked of patterns before. Paying attention to those patterns too to see if it is a problem or just today somebody needs a day because sometimes, we all need a day.
Jackie Morreale (35:07)
I can't imagine a better way of doing bad days than creating something. Maybe you'll create your best work in that way.
I want to ask you some quick-fire questions to get to know Keith Gamache even better. Because I think we can philosophically talk about art for a very long time.
Keith Gamache (35:27)
I feel like this is going to be the part where I fail. Quick-fire questions.
Jackie Morreale (35:30)
Where I fail! Trying my best to not have it be my worst student day. Anyway, what is your favorite city?
Keith Gamache (35:37)
Boston, which is tough in New York. Yeah, I'm from Massachusetts. I love my Boston sports teams. I love that the first shots of the revolution were fired there. We both run as part of our lives and I haven't.
Jackie Morreale (35:40)
Everyone in New York's like, Seriously? Boston?
Keith Gamache (35:58)
Right now, it's a goal and a dream of mine to actually qualify for the Boston Marathon. I've only done two, but I really like them. This December 2024, I ran a 50-mile race.
(Continued below)
Keith Gamache (17:59)
Yeah. Mentioning that made me think about the experience that I had at the Long Island Children's Museum, which the pieces behind me were from. Part of that show was also a residency at the museum.
One week, Monday to Friday, it was two workshops a day of kids and their parents coming to the museum. The first day was tons of fun and after that, I started to think this is what Broadway performers must feel like.
I even started to have more respect for Broadway performers. I had to look at it, I'm doing the same thing twice a day, but for these kids and their parents coming in, this is their one performance.
In my art classroom, every day is different, like we're moving on. There are different stages of the project.
Jackie Morreale (18:56)
Do you know how many students you've had over 32 years? I'm just curious.
Keith Gamache (19:01)
I once tried to figure it out, but then I gave up. You could just do rudimentary math and just go, well, I have about a 100 kids a year, and multiply that by 30. But there were some students I taught all four years, so that's not a new student. I taught virtually all students who took painting and drawing at least two out of the four years that they were at the school. So, it gets to be tricky. But I do know it's definitely thousands.
Jackie Morreale (19:32)
At least. You have the same kid, from ninth grade to 12th grade. Maybe, because you had the kid least two or three times, which is amazing. But you're really getting that kid at a different, unique stage in their life. So in a way, they are different, especially starting high school at ninth grade to a young adult who's graduating, and knows that they want to go into arts or knows that they want to do computer science or whatever. A different person.
Keith Gamache (19:45)
I've spent my whole career teaching 14- to 18-year-olds. But 14- to 18-year-olds in 2025 are different than the 14- to 18-year-olds in 1995. Mostly because of technology.
That's been a funny thing, to reflect upon and just to keep reminding myself of. It's also what helps to keep it fresh, too. Outside of the fact that everyone is an individual.
While there might be some universal things that teenagers go through from when you were in school to today, there are a lot of universal feelings.
Growing up, starting to push away from home and parents and friends and going off to college and those fears and those anxieties and some of that is very consistent and predictable, but with differences in technology, media, expectations.
It really is a remarkably different landscape in which I'm teaching as well.
Jackie Morreale (21:05)
Interesting. Do you feel that technology is improving the experience, since you have your finger on the pulse of the teenage student body in New York, at least, as a population?
Keith Gamache (21:17)
New York along with another number of other states have now at the highest levels of government, banned cell phones and personal devices in schools. I'm excited to see what that's going to look like. Our school's policy has been off and away, but there is also some flexibility with that. For instance, a Dell Chromebook takes horrible pictures. So, to have students document their work, I would always let them use their their own personal phone to take that looking at references, even though I couldn't stand it. I'm like, how can you look at that little picture on your little phone? I was like, please let me print out a full eight and half by 11. Yeah, No, Mr. Gamache, I'm fine.
At some points, I accept that too, because that is, I think, a generational difference. If they're comfortable doing it that way, why should I impose my antiquated paper ways?
Jackie Morreale (22:22)
Yeah, dinosaur age way of doing things. There was nothing like a computer in your pocket that could take the most amazing pictures and could search anything back then. The access to technology is very different.
Keith Gamache (22:34)
Your IB sketchbook was probably filled with black and white photocopies. We might have just gotten a color copier printer in the room, but ink and toner was so expensive. All of those things are different. And that's by and large, how I try to treat these changes that have happened, I try to not put them in competition against each other to be like, this one is better than that one. There are pros and cons to things. The ease of use is both awesome and scary.
There are things that you learn when you have to search for something. When you're able to just get it, well, that takes out, I don't want to say some of the fun, because when you're doing research and digging through stuff to get the right sources, it's time consuming. I don't think that the technology is inherently good or bad, but we do have to figure out how to use it effectively. So in my school, last year I started working on the AI committee because that's something that we're grappling with. I think progress is important. There's a lot that I'm skeptical of, that I don't like.
As an artist, too, the analogy I make is this:
Once upon a time, people were like, Oh, no, the camera is bad. It's going to take away creativity.
It didn't take away creativity. It changed the way people painted.
Then with computers, Oh, no, Photoshop is bad. It allows people to cheat. No, it changed the way people work.
I feel the same thing is going to happen with AI. There's going to be bad AI use, but then there'll also be some extremely clever and ingenious things done. It will speed up creativity for some people. It'll be like a collaborator.
I think as long as artists remember still that they're the human and they're in charge and they can determine how much they want to give over control to or maintain those I think are individual questions for artists and people to answer.
I do think as an educator, schools do have a responsibility to start to help guide students through using it in appropriate ways because it's not going to go away.
Jackie Morreale (25:02)
I think it's absolutely only going to get bigger and stronger and more used throughout our daily lives. The nice thing, I think, as an artist who's picked up a pen or a pencil or a paintbrush, is that taking it down to those basic elements where you're just making marks on paper, however you want to make them, whatever direction, abstract, realist, whatever.
It's a way of expressing yourself that's, it's not anti-technology, but it just brings you back to your roots somehow. So even if you're using the various AI apps to get inspiration or some way to enhance what you're doing as an artist, I think like you said, you're in charge and you have to take it back to your roots. And I like to get my hands dirty and feel that there is a difference between what you're getting out of an AI platform to what you're creating as a fine artist.
Keith Gamache (25:53)
Yeah. I think those tactile qualities are really important and for a lot of people and to not lose that. My work lends itself very well to digital applications. In Illustrator, I made grids with circles and I could click on them and change the colors of them. I started working that way for a little bit because it made sense.
It didn't last that long because I didn't enjoy working that way. Clicking and filling and changing colors on a screen with a computer is a lot different than dipping the paint in and doing this. The smell of the materials too. There are a lot of parts of making and experiencing art beyond just what you see. That's a part of the creators' motivation and what they get out of the process of making art.
Jackie Morreale (26:53)
For me, if I'm the observer and I'm trying to look at someone's art, I'm looking for those imperfections. I want to see the human behind the art. That's what I love. I do use Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, so Adobe programs, and I think they're great. But for the sake of creating art, yes, I don't want to just fill my circle in different colors that I've already grabbed swatches of. I want to see the depth of that stroke.
I recently went to the Norton Museum, here in West Palm Beach, and just got addicted to the older stuff, the impressionists. I saw a Monet after not seeing one for many years, and it just took my breath away. The human behind it who could barely see, who's trying to interpret water lilies in his backyard, and the chunkiness of the paint, and how it all comes together to one breathtaking composition.
Keith Gamache (27:44)
Yeah. You had asked me about Mondrian earlier and my initial investigations into Mondrian were over 20 years ago, very superficial and based largely on reproductions that I had seen and also very much visual. But then after seeing paintings in person and in reading and learning more about the process, he really was a painter. It's not like that blue was that blue from the beginning. That blue might have changed blueness several times as he was making that painting to get that right and perfect for him at that time.
Jackie Morreale (28:26)
Can you imagine Mondrian compared to Illustrator, a bunch of vectors, squares and lines that you can just thicken the stroke or you can change the blue color just with one click? Here's an artist who's formulating these perfect lines and perfect color from one side to the other. The skill set to create geometric work that I think we're both describing, who knows, maybe inspired some of this completely simplified perfected version of this in some of those Adobe programs.
Keith Gamache (28:59)
Even as you're saying that, you think about a designer and their use of the computer and there is something about the cleanliness and precision of it. But stuff that we never really see is how many times most likely did that person shift something the tiniest bit up, down, left, right or diagonal until it was like, No, that is the spot that that needs to be. I think that's one of the things that if you're not a creator yourself, you don't bring that kind of thoughtfulness to when you look at something to know that it didn't happen immediately.
Jackie Morreale (29:39)
The process is just different, right? You still have to have the eye. You still must have the skill set, know what you're going for. It's just different.
Keith Gamache (29:42)
Yeah. I think that's why, with a lot of AI stuff, people feel, because it does come out right there. Like the machine is able to make all this stuff.
Jackie Morreale (29:52)
Even images. It's crazy, right? Give it a couple little variables and ask it to create. It might even be good.
Keith Gamache (30:02)
It might even, yeah. Whenever I start to dabble with it and make things is I try to get it to make what I have pictured in my head. I can never be descriptive enough to get it right there. But then it might create images where I was just like, Wow, that's really neat that that happened. I never would have thought of that.
So can I use these things to put together? I don't look at that as much different from all the years before that, when a student would come up to me and go like, Mr. Gamache, what should I make?
Jackie Morreale (30:21)
Do people ask you that every single day? What should I make?
Keith Gamache (30:39)
It happens a lot, it's not new. It was happening when you were in school too. Then
I would never just say, well, Jackie, make this, because then that's not you. But it would be a process of usually questions, well, what did you make the last time? Or let's look at your last two or three pieces.
Jackie Morreale (30:57)
I remember you have this Socratic method to your art dialogues where you really are able to get a student to dig deep within to figure out for themselves what they want to do. That's so interesting. What should I do?
Keith Gamache (31:13)
Then is it, do they want to continue something that they've been doing, or have you hit the end of the road with that? Do you need something else? It's not just an about face. It's not looking around the room and ooh, there's a shiny object. Let me do that. But a conscious understanding of, well, I've been doing this for a while. I need something different, let me shift. Maybe a material remains consistent. A concept that you've been exploring gets to go through. I think like if creators use AI in a way to be that collaborator, especially if you are isolated. I'm not there at 8:30 at night to help out a student, so it being dialogue-based and not just accepting do this, then I think it can be positive.
Jackie Morreale (32:04)
Yes. As a professional who, thinks, I'm creative. I'm going to say I am creative. I've been creative.
Keith Gamache (32:16)
You are creative and you always were.
Jackie Morreale (32:38)
I miss having you there to say, Okay, this is the assignment. These are the parameters because sometimes giving you parameters it makes you be more creative in your thinking, and how you fit what you want to create to those parameters.
Certainly having a tight timeline always helps as well, at least for me, like the 90% of creation is happening in the last 10% of time. That's usually my process. It really takes such self-discipline to do that yourself. I think that students don't realize while they're going through the process that it really is a gift that you thought of this design prompt that really pushes them to create something that's relevant, beautiful, expresses themselves, all of the above, that when you're kind of faced with a blank paper as an adult who's trying to be creative, maybe you don't know where to start.
So having some guidance from somebody who's really open-minded like you and does have the patience to dialogue and figure out what's going on in the creative mind and how you enhance that student and their work is a gift.
Keith Gamache (33:25)
It also makes me chuckle. I will reveal this to you, that a number of times, I'm in my studio and I'm being my worst student.
I chuckle because then I go if I were teaching me right now, I would be very frustrated with what I'm doing because I'm being too precise or too precious.
What I need to do right now is just relax or stop or do more. Sometimes you get into something you want it to be a certain way and it's just not working or might be shutting down. Sometimes my art teacher voice comes in and helps to get me.
Jackie Morreale (33:59)
Remind yourself, yes. Distance yourself from it for a moment.
Keith Gamache (34:05)
In the classroom, it also helps me to sometimes step back and realize my student is just a human being going through the same artistic struggles that you go through. So just be patient and let them have the bad day, which is hard sometimes for a teacher, and as you know, as a parent, it can be hard to see our students and our children have that bad day, but a lot is learned from that there.
Jackie Morreale (34:32)
A bad day in the art room or a bad day in general with other stuff that's happening in their life?
Keith Gamache (34:38)
I was speaking about a bad art day, but that's the other reality to remember: All of my students have lives beyond the 40 minutes that I see them.
It could be stress about a test that they're taking the next period or, things that are going on at home.
We've talked of patterns before. Paying attention to those patterns too to see if it is a problem or just today somebody needs a day because sometimes, we all need a day.
Jackie Morreale (35:07)
I can't imagine a better way of doing bad days than creating something. Maybe you'll create your best work in that way.
I want to ask you some quick-fire questions to get to know Keith Gamache even better. Because I think we can philosophically talk about art for a very long time.
Keith Gamache (35:27)
I feel like this is going to be the part where I fail. Quick-fire questions.
Jackie Morreale (35:30)
Where I fail! Trying my best to not have it be my worst student day. Anyway, what is your favorite city?
Keith Gamache (35:37)
Boston, which is tough in New York. Yeah, I'm from Massachusetts. I love my Boston sports teams. I love that the first shots of the revolution were fired there. We both run as part of our lives and I haven't.
Jackie Morreale (35:40)
Everyone in New York's like, Seriously? Boston?
Keith Gamache (35:58)
Right now, it's a goal and a dream of mine to actually qualify for the Boston Marathon. I've only done two, but I really like them. This December 2024, I ran a 50-mile race.
(Continued below)
Painting by Keith Gamache:
Rose painting, by Keith Gamache
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Boston Singlet painting, by Keith Gamache
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Creeper painting, by Keith Gamache
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(Continued)
Jackie Morreale (36:01)
So your running is marathoning at this point! And ultra marathons! That's serious. That's semi-insane. Amazing!
Keith Gamache (36:26)
Yeah. Boston. I would love to, but I'm not there yet. I'm hoping that that can be a retirement dream. Running those kinds of miles that you must put in to do it well is a lot. When you're doing family and work. I'm thinking maybe once I retire, I can put in the miles to do that safely. As you get older too, running and keeping off the injuries is important.
Jackie Morreale (37:03)
Running fifty miles is a really long run. It's a dream to ultra marathon. That's amazing.
Keith Gamache (37:09)
Can I ask you, what your favorite city is?
Jackie Morreale (37:11)
I like Miami. I like the fact that it's like Venice in the tropics. I like the street art. I like hearing Spanish everywhere I go, and salsa music playing. I like the vibe of it.
But New York is very much the same as that for me. I miss the city vibe.
Keith Gamache (37:27)
Yeah, I just like cities. I think that is something with me. Like, actually, I love Los Angeles…
Jackie Morreale (37:30)
Who loves LA... maybe someone, not me in particular...
Keith Gamache (37:37)
Well, I never expected to even like LA, never mind, love it. Growing up in Massachusetts, being a Celtics fan, was like Lakers, evil.
Jackie Morreale (37:47)
Do you like the downtown area, or the expansive city of LA, that is driving and traffic and smog?
Keith Gamache (37:54)
I like the expansiveness of it. From an art perspective, too. I went out and visited family and friends in LA, you could be an artist almost anywhere in LA. Things are changing in New York now. But when I had my studio in Long Island City, the feeling in general then was, to be an artist in New York, you're in Manhattan. Brooklyn was acceptable. Then it was like Queens, you might have well as been on Long Island. OK, Long Island City is all right. And that's where my studio was. But geographically, it is a very small area.
Jackie Morreale (38:21)
Agree. LA is spread out and people love art and individuality.
Keith Gamache (38:40)
Do know what my favorite part of quick-fire questions is? The questions are quick, but the answers, it is not quick-fire answers. I accept responsibility for that.
Jackie Morreale (38:44)
That's true. I'm going to go to the next one. Favorite book?
Keith Gamache (38:56)
Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities as inspiration for me becoming a painter. Another, I will go with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. I might laugh at myself if I were to go back and read it now, but at the time that I read it, it just felt really good. I liked it.
Jackie Morreale (39:19)
Place to create?
Keith Gamache (39:20)
My porch or this ambiguous room that we have in our house that has been the Lego room, the playroom, the exercise room, it's changed a lot of ways. That's where my work table currently is and where I do most of my work.
Jackie Morreale (39:37)
Artist of all time? It can be you, by the way. You can pick Keith Gamache.
Keith Gamache (39:40)
Definitely not me.
It might be Georgia O'Keeffe. She was the first fine artist that I learned about. I learned about her through books when I would go to Walden Books at the mall when I was in high school. I discovered the book, and I remember reading as much of it as I could and looking at pictures.
Back then, bookstores weren't like Barnes & Noble today, where you can sit down in a cushy chair. After five minutes, the employees at the store would be like, Teenager, get out of our store. And I had a bookmark that I kept in the book. And then next Friday, when I went to the mall, I'd go back to that point and I made it through the book in that way. It was a Georgia O'Keeffe book and she's still special to me.
Jackie Morreale (40:10)
You kept the bookmark in the book on the shelf, lol! Her work is gorgeous. Do you ever use anything like a watercolor? I don't see you using a whole lot of gradient shading. You're kind of more into blocked off colors, right?
Keith Gamache (40:39)
I think just aspects. Not so much reflected in my work, but I always loved the aspects of magnification in her work, the close cropping and things like that. I loved her story. I think that was the first time that I read about an artist as a story and a human being too. Not just being attracted to the visual and the imagery, but the fascinating life that she lived, her independence at that time was extraordinary. The cloud paintings too, I particularly like. There's an element of flatness and patterning now that I'm talking through it that could possibly be in my work. Yeah, she was an early favorite and remains enduring.
Jackie Morreale (41:25)
Favorite period of time or style in art history?
Keith Gamache (41:28)
That's impossible for me to answer. But… I love ancient art. When I studied art history, especially Egyptian art, Mesopotamian art, I liked the artifacts. I think something about the enduring quality. The mystery of, how were those things made? If there is one favorite, that one just kind of keeps rising to the top. It is funny because it's also mostly architecture and sculpture.
Jackie Morreale (41:52)
You make art, you make objects, right? And now we're talking artifacts, objects.
Keith Gamache (41:57)
One of my more recent paintings too is I made a scarab painting, which was inspired by this little jade scarab from either the Met or the Brooklyn Museum. I keep coming back to ancient art.
Jackie Morreale (42:01)
We'll have to talk more about the Scarab and the Butterflies and the Firefly paintings. Favorite gallery or art show?
Keith Gamache (42:16)
This one is easy for me. Sol LeWitt at the Pace Gallery in 1994.
Jackie Morreale (42:18)
That is so specific.
Keith Gamache (42:26)
Going to NYU and just walking into galleries. I had Rosalie Goldberg as a professor for a contemporary art class. She taught me how to write. Every week we had to write. I think it was like three or four reviews of shows that we went to. It forced us to go into galleries, but then she actually read the stuff that we wrote and she would mark it up gloriously with red pen and give it back to us. We had to rewrite what we had written the previous week based on her feedback and write new reviews. She got me going into galleries in a way that I had never done before.
I would go into Pace Gallery. I had been there a ton of times before. All of a sudden, I walk in and there are walls where there hadn't been walls before and every wall is covered top to bottom, left to right, some with just simple elegant pencil lines, some with layers of ink that look like they could be Italian frescoes of these geometric forms.
Two weeks later, the show was over and it was back to being the Pace Gallery. I had learned about Sol LeWitt in a little art history textbook that had a black and white image of one of his cube wall drawings. I was like, this is garbage, that's not art. He writes directions and people follow through on it. Then I walked in, and I actually experienced it surrounding me.
As you can tell from the specificity of my response down to the date, was amazing. Then when I interviewed to teach at South Side, my demo lesson was inspired by that Sol LeWitt experience.
Jackie Morreale (44:04)
Yes, it made an impact! I’m surprised that you don't do experiential shows. I think that your work could lend itself to that. Just putting it out there. some sort of light around the pegboard. I don't know. I guess we'll have to find out.
Keith Gamache (44:19)
Maybe in retirement. I'll fill whole walls with pegboard and paint them.
I like James Turrell, Dan Flavin. Have you ever been out to Dan Flavin's, Bridgehampton, part of the Dia Center? It's a wonderful little spot.
Jackie Morreale (44:36)
Nope, but now I need to go. I worked in theater lighting for years. Many lighting designers claim James Turrell is one of their inspirations. You're working with color in such a way that I could see a lighting designer using it in a very similar precise method. Totally different medium, right? It is interesting how one type of art can kind of reflect the other in different interesting ways.
Favorite men's haircut?
Keith Gamache (45:04)
Not cutting hair, like this right here. One day I'll get tired of the curls. Then, I'll just take my clippers and shave it off.
Jackie Morreale (45:05)
I've seen you totally shaved with sideburns with the goatee. I think you had a Mohawk at one point, a pretty good one.
Keith Gamache (45:23)
Yes, probably pretty significant sideburns with a goatee or no goatee. If I did ever have a mohawk, it might've just been for a day for fun. Every time I shave my head, almost every time that I do it, I will leave myself a mohawk. I'm a closeted punk rocker, but I don't have the confidence to really be one. I've always admired a lot of punk musicians, but it's a little bit too much reckless abandon and self-confidence, that I don't even possess.
One of my students got her Girl Scout Gold Award this year and I was her advisor. She did it in computer science and she invited me to the ceremony. One of the local politicians there I've gotten to know over the years and her not chief of staff, but whatever it would be for this level. He was a young guy probably in his mid to late 20s. I was talking with her and then all of a sudden, he goes, You have fantastic hair. I'm just like, Yeah.
Jackie Morreale (46:39)
You do. I mean, it's exactly the same as 1998.
So, on your current show. Congratulations on your Firefly piece being selected for the One Mile Galleries exhibit in Kingston, New York!
Tell us more about the Firefly piece and the show itself, right on the Hudson. How did you get involved with it?
Keith Gamache (46:58)
Thank you. Firefly is also a pegboard painting. It doesn't have any text, which I just, over the last two years, have gotten more comfortable working purely with representational imagery again. It's a shaped piece, which is something that started to happen with the paintings that I've been making. Squares with a series of flower paintings I had done, shifted to rhombuses with some insects.
There was a garden tiger moth, a bee, and a ladybug that I painted. So, shifting those squares to diagonals, making them rhombuses just seemed to give them bit more life or energy, which I thought was appropriate for them being insects. My younger son has been on an important spiritual journey the last couple of years.
Firefly is also in a cross shape, which very directly and quite consciously comes from being in the churches. I had mentioned before, I like ancient art, always loved medieval art. Firefly lent itself well compositionally to be a cross with the wings spread, but also the aspect of the glowing abdomen. In thinking of that too, almost like a halo and this idea of light with spirituality. There's a lot of that that's going into it. It's a personally meaningful piece to me in thinking about my son and my relationship with him as well.
The fact that it was chosen by them was really special for me. It was just an open call. I don't enter a lot of open calls, but the fact that it was in Kingston and on the Hudson appealed to me. Starting to establish some type of a connection up there would be really special.
Jackie Morreale (48:44)
It's beautiful up there. Still close enough to the city. Super artsy, obviously. A little different than Long Island, culturally, and beautiful if nature is what is inspiring your art right now.
Keith Gamache (48:52)
Yeah. Like I said, I like all cities. Those upstate New York cities that are on the Hudson, nothing like New York and its grandeur. Just as long as you have one good pizza place. A Mexican restaurant to go to, an ice cream shop, maybe Japanese, my culinary needs are met. Then having some galleries close by while also having proximity to nature, that to me is just a retirement dream. We'll see if it happens.
Jackie Morreale (49:30)
If that's what you want to do, I'm sure it will. Can you tell us more about your work with the Long Island Children's Museum and other museums in the Tri-State area and beyond?
Keith Gamache (49:39)
Long Island Children's Museum first came about because one of my students' mothers worked there as part of programming. We had gotten to know each other and then she shared my work with one of the artistic directors for exhibitions. I had one of my Dot-to-Dot exhibitions there.
It was probably five or six years later, they contacted me again. They were applying for a grant to get these Andy Warhol prints and to do a residency. Those are the ones behind me. They're inspired by Andy Warhol self-portraits. The blocks there actually say Brillo. Those are inspired by his Brillo boxes.
Brillo was six letters and then I just put one letter on each face of the cube and stacked them up and it's in the color scheme. The director had asked if I could be a part of the application process and writing for the grant. For me, it was awesome because I now had an excuse to make art that I knew was going to be part of an exhibition and scene. One of the things that you can struggle with is, I keep making these objects that me and my family see and stay on my walls or take up physical space in my house. When they accumulate too much, it can feel like, why am I doing this? This was very exciting knowing that it was going to have an audience and definitely spurred my creativity.
You mentioned earlier, having those deadlines help. Knowing that you're working towards something is definitely motivation. That was just a wonderful experience.
Jackie Morreale (51:07)
Do you take commissions if someone were to offer to be part of another show or want some of your work in their own place, studio, office, whatever? Is that something that you take?
Keith Gamache (51:20)
Commissions for me, can be challenging. It would really have to be a collaborative process. It's harder if they just say, Keith, would you paint this for me? Then I don't have as much of a connection to that.
If we started to talk about, a range of possibilities and if it was a back and forth and if it also had possibly the escape route, if nothing's clicking for me. Because as much as like their text and they're kind of sign like, I have trouble just being a sign painter. Even though a lot of my ideas have come about in that way. It's a complicated thing. Could be perfect, could not be perfect.
Jackie Morreale (52:10)
I think what you are describing is you require authenticity in everything that you do. It has to be something that's meaningful.
Keith Gamache (52:15)
Yeah. It's just not easy for me.
Jackie Morreale (52:20)
Is it easy for anyone as an artist to take somebody else's idea and make it in their own style and legit?
(Continued below)
Jackie Morreale (36:01)
So your running is marathoning at this point! And ultra marathons! That's serious. That's semi-insane. Amazing!
Keith Gamache (36:26)
Yeah. Boston. I would love to, but I'm not there yet. I'm hoping that that can be a retirement dream. Running those kinds of miles that you must put in to do it well is a lot. When you're doing family and work. I'm thinking maybe once I retire, I can put in the miles to do that safely. As you get older too, running and keeping off the injuries is important.
Jackie Morreale (37:03)
Running fifty miles is a really long run. It's a dream to ultra marathon. That's amazing.
Keith Gamache (37:09)
Can I ask you, what your favorite city is?
Jackie Morreale (37:11)
I like Miami. I like the fact that it's like Venice in the tropics. I like the street art. I like hearing Spanish everywhere I go, and salsa music playing. I like the vibe of it.
But New York is very much the same as that for me. I miss the city vibe.
Keith Gamache (37:27)
Yeah, I just like cities. I think that is something with me. Like, actually, I love Los Angeles…
Jackie Morreale (37:30)
Who loves LA... maybe someone, not me in particular...
Keith Gamache (37:37)
Well, I never expected to even like LA, never mind, love it. Growing up in Massachusetts, being a Celtics fan, was like Lakers, evil.
Jackie Morreale (37:47)
Do you like the downtown area, or the expansive city of LA, that is driving and traffic and smog?
Keith Gamache (37:54)
I like the expansiveness of it. From an art perspective, too. I went out and visited family and friends in LA, you could be an artist almost anywhere in LA. Things are changing in New York now. But when I had my studio in Long Island City, the feeling in general then was, to be an artist in New York, you're in Manhattan. Brooklyn was acceptable. Then it was like Queens, you might have well as been on Long Island. OK, Long Island City is all right. And that's where my studio was. But geographically, it is a very small area.
Jackie Morreale (38:21)
Agree. LA is spread out and people love art and individuality.
Keith Gamache (38:40)
Do know what my favorite part of quick-fire questions is? The questions are quick, but the answers, it is not quick-fire answers. I accept responsibility for that.
Jackie Morreale (38:44)
That's true. I'm going to go to the next one. Favorite book?
Keith Gamache (38:56)
Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities as inspiration for me becoming a painter. Another, I will go with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. I might laugh at myself if I were to go back and read it now, but at the time that I read it, it just felt really good. I liked it.
Jackie Morreale (39:19)
Place to create?
Keith Gamache (39:20)
My porch or this ambiguous room that we have in our house that has been the Lego room, the playroom, the exercise room, it's changed a lot of ways. That's where my work table currently is and where I do most of my work.
Jackie Morreale (39:37)
Artist of all time? It can be you, by the way. You can pick Keith Gamache.
Keith Gamache (39:40)
Definitely not me.
It might be Georgia O'Keeffe. She was the first fine artist that I learned about. I learned about her through books when I would go to Walden Books at the mall when I was in high school. I discovered the book, and I remember reading as much of it as I could and looking at pictures.
Back then, bookstores weren't like Barnes & Noble today, where you can sit down in a cushy chair. After five minutes, the employees at the store would be like, Teenager, get out of our store. And I had a bookmark that I kept in the book. And then next Friday, when I went to the mall, I'd go back to that point and I made it through the book in that way. It was a Georgia O'Keeffe book and she's still special to me.
Jackie Morreale (40:10)
You kept the bookmark in the book on the shelf, lol! Her work is gorgeous. Do you ever use anything like a watercolor? I don't see you using a whole lot of gradient shading. You're kind of more into blocked off colors, right?
Keith Gamache (40:39)
I think just aspects. Not so much reflected in my work, but I always loved the aspects of magnification in her work, the close cropping and things like that. I loved her story. I think that was the first time that I read about an artist as a story and a human being too. Not just being attracted to the visual and the imagery, but the fascinating life that she lived, her independence at that time was extraordinary. The cloud paintings too, I particularly like. There's an element of flatness and patterning now that I'm talking through it that could possibly be in my work. Yeah, she was an early favorite and remains enduring.
Jackie Morreale (41:25)
Favorite period of time or style in art history?
Keith Gamache (41:28)
That's impossible for me to answer. But… I love ancient art. When I studied art history, especially Egyptian art, Mesopotamian art, I liked the artifacts. I think something about the enduring quality. The mystery of, how were those things made? If there is one favorite, that one just kind of keeps rising to the top. It is funny because it's also mostly architecture and sculpture.
Jackie Morreale (41:52)
You make art, you make objects, right? And now we're talking artifacts, objects.
Keith Gamache (41:57)
One of my more recent paintings too is I made a scarab painting, which was inspired by this little jade scarab from either the Met or the Brooklyn Museum. I keep coming back to ancient art.
Jackie Morreale (42:01)
We'll have to talk more about the Scarab and the Butterflies and the Firefly paintings. Favorite gallery or art show?
Keith Gamache (42:16)
This one is easy for me. Sol LeWitt at the Pace Gallery in 1994.
Jackie Morreale (42:18)
That is so specific.
Keith Gamache (42:26)
Going to NYU and just walking into galleries. I had Rosalie Goldberg as a professor for a contemporary art class. She taught me how to write. Every week we had to write. I think it was like three or four reviews of shows that we went to. It forced us to go into galleries, but then she actually read the stuff that we wrote and she would mark it up gloriously with red pen and give it back to us. We had to rewrite what we had written the previous week based on her feedback and write new reviews. She got me going into galleries in a way that I had never done before.
I would go into Pace Gallery. I had been there a ton of times before. All of a sudden, I walk in and there are walls where there hadn't been walls before and every wall is covered top to bottom, left to right, some with just simple elegant pencil lines, some with layers of ink that look like they could be Italian frescoes of these geometric forms.
Two weeks later, the show was over and it was back to being the Pace Gallery. I had learned about Sol LeWitt in a little art history textbook that had a black and white image of one of his cube wall drawings. I was like, this is garbage, that's not art. He writes directions and people follow through on it. Then I walked in, and I actually experienced it surrounding me.
As you can tell from the specificity of my response down to the date, was amazing. Then when I interviewed to teach at South Side, my demo lesson was inspired by that Sol LeWitt experience.
Jackie Morreale (44:04)
Yes, it made an impact! I’m surprised that you don't do experiential shows. I think that your work could lend itself to that. Just putting it out there. some sort of light around the pegboard. I don't know. I guess we'll have to find out.
Keith Gamache (44:19)
Maybe in retirement. I'll fill whole walls with pegboard and paint them.
I like James Turrell, Dan Flavin. Have you ever been out to Dan Flavin's, Bridgehampton, part of the Dia Center? It's a wonderful little spot.
Jackie Morreale (44:36)
Nope, but now I need to go. I worked in theater lighting for years. Many lighting designers claim James Turrell is one of their inspirations. You're working with color in such a way that I could see a lighting designer using it in a very similar precise method. Totally different medium, right? It is interesting how one type of art can kind of reflect the other in different interesting ways.
Favorite men's haircut?
Keith Gamache (45:04)
Not cutting hair, like this right here. One day I'll get tired of the curls. Then, I'll just take my clippers and shave it off.
Jackie Morreale (45:05)
I've seen you totally shaved with sideburns with the goatee. I think you had a Mohawk at one point, a pretty good one.
Keith Gamache (45:23)
Yes, probably pretty significant sideburns with a goatee or no goatee. If I did ever have a mohawk, it might've just been for a day for fun. Every time I shave my head, almost every time that I do it, I will leave myself a mohawk. I'm a closeted punk rocker, but I don't have the confidence to really be one. I've always admired a lot of punk musicians, but it's a little bit too much reckless abandon and self-confidence, that I don't even possess.
One of my students got her Girl Scout Gold Award this year and I was her advisor. She did it in computer science and she invited me to the ceremony. One of the local politicians there I've gotten to know over the years and her not chief of staff, but whatever it would be for this level. He was a young guy probably in his mid to late 20s. I was talking with her and then all of a sudden, he goes, You have fantastic hair. I'm just like, Yeah.
Jackie Morreale (46:39)
You do. I mean, it's exactly the same as 1998.
So, on your current show. Congratulations on your Firefly piece being selected for the One Mile Galleries exhibit in Kingston, New York!
Tell us more about the Firefly piece and the show itself, right on the Hudson. How did you get involved with it?
Keith Gamache (46:58)
Thank you. Firefly is also a pegboard painting. It doesn't have any text, which I just, over the last two years, have gotten more comfortable working purely with representational imagery again. It's a shaped piece, which is something that started to happen with the paintings that I've been making. Squares with a series of flower paintings I had done, shifted to rhombuses with some insects.
There was a garden tiger moth, a bee, and a ladybug that I painted. So, shifting those squares to diagonals, making them rhombuses just seemed to give them bit more life or energy, which I thought was appropriate for them being insects. My younger son has been on an important spiritual journey the last couple of years.
Firefly is also in a cross shape, which very directly and quite consciously comes from being in the churches. I had mentioned before, I like ancient art, always loved medieval art. Firefly lent itself well compositionally to be a cross with the wings spread, but also the aspect of the glowing abdomen. In thinking of that too, almost like a halo and this idea of light with spirituality. There's a lot of that that's going into it. It's a personally meaningful piece to me in thinking about my son and my relationship with him as well.
The fact that it was chosen by them was really special for me. It was just an open call. I don't enter a lot of open calls, but the fact that it was in Kingston and on the Hudson appealed to me. Starting to establish some type of a connection up there would be really special.
Jackie Morreale (48:44)
It's beautiful up there. Still close enough to the city. Super artsy, obviously. A little different than Long Island, culturally, and beautiful if nature is what is inspiring your art right now.
Keith Gamache (48:52)
Yeah. Like I said, I like all cities. Those upstate New York cities that are on the Hudson, nothing like New York and its grandeur. Just as long as you have one good pizza place. A Mexican restaurant to go to, an ice cream shop, maybe Japanese, my culinary needs are met. Then having some galleries close by while also having proximity to nature, that to me is just a retirement dream. We'll see if it happens.
Jackie Morreale (49:30)
If that's what you want to do, I'm sure it will. Can you tell us more about your work with the Long Island Children's Museum and other museums in the Tri-State area and beyond?
Keith Gamache (49:39)
Long Island Children's Museum first came about because one of my students' mothers worked there as part of programming. We had gotten to know each other and then she shared my work with one of the artistic directors for exhibitions. I had one of my Dot-to-Dot exhibitions there.
It was probably five or six years later, they contacted me again. They were applying for a grant to get these Andy Warhol prints and to do a residency. Those are the ones behind me. They're inspired by Andy Warhol self-portraits. The blocks there actually say Brillo. Those are inspired by his Brillo boxes.
Brillo was six letters and then I just put one letter on each face of the cube and stacked them up and it's in the color scheme. The director had asked if I could be a part of the application process and writing for the grant. For me, it was awesome because I now had an excuse to make art that I knew was going to be part of an exhibition and scene. One of the things that you can struggle with is, I keep making these objects that me and my family see and stay on my walls or take up physical space in my house. When they accumulate too much, it can feel like, why am I doing this? This was very exciting knowing that it was going to have an audience and definitely spurred my creativity.
You mentioned earlier, having those deadlines help. Knowing that you're working towards something is definitely motivation. That was just a wonderful experience.
Jackie Morreale (51:07)
Do you take commissions if someone were to offer to be part of another show or want some of your work in their own place, studio, office, whatever? Is that something that you take?
Keith Gamache (51:20)
Commissions for me, can be challenging. It would really have to be a collaborative process. It's harder if they just say, Keith, would you paint this for me? Then I don't have as much of a connection to that.
If we started to talk about, a range of possibilities and if it was a back and forth and if it also had possibly the escape route, if nothing's clicking for me. Because as much as like their text and they're kind of sign like, I have trouble just being a sign painter. Even though a lot of my ideas have come about in that way. It's a complicated thing. Could be perfect, could not be perfect.
Jackie Morreale (52:10)
I think what you are describing is you require authenticity in everything that you do. It has to be something that's meaningful.
Keith Gamache (52:15)
Yeah. It's just not easy for me.
Jackie Morreale (52:20)
Is it easy for anyone as an artist to take somebody else's idea and make it in their own style and legit?
(Continued below)
COVID-19 Paintings by Keith Gamache:
Social Distancing painting, by Keith Gamache
|
Isolated Painting, by Keith Gamache
|
Pirola painting, by Keith Gamache
|
(Continued)
Keith Gamache (52:27)
I think for some people it is. At the end of the day, all artists are craftspeople. Some people are just more comfortable doing it or have to do that. If your options are working behind a desk in a cubicle and that's going to make you miserable or make paintings or other art that might not satisfy your spirit, but helps you pay the bills and keep doing that. Then like that. Yeah, that. I think because I do teach and that has its own skill set and requires its own energy. I've given so much time, and passion to that, too, that then I don't necessarily want to compromise things then on the painting end.
Painting the walls in my house, I hate doing it, but I also hate paying other people to do it because I'm fully capable: It's paint on a brush going on a flat surface. Making artwork is a different thing.
Jackie Morreale (53:23)
It's a different expression. Your exhibitions are many. You've been showing work since 1998. As an artist, what keeps you going? What would you do if you couldn't paint?
Keith Gamache (53:35)
I would just run. I really love running right now. Sometimes even more so than painting. There are times if I'm preparing for a race, I'll be like, if I put this many hours into my painting, maybe I would have realized my painting dreams and goals.
One thing I like about running is that when the run is over, it's gone and it doesn't take up any space. Then the painting can sit there and remind you that it's not finished yet, or it's not quite what you wanted to do, or it hasn't sold or it hasn't been shown.
That's the downside to painting. Running has things you can measure it by. I ran faster. That makes me feel good. It is a little bit more immediate, say, than some of the painting.
Jackie Morreale (54:18)
For me, running is an activity that just boosts creativity. I can work creative problems out in my mind while running without thinking about it. That's why I like it, personally.
Keith Gamache (54:35)
Yeah. Do you listen to books on tape when you run?
Jackie Morreale (54:40)
I usually listen to very loud music and I think about nothing. Do you listen to books on tape while running? I love the idea, if you're on the road.
Keith Gamache (54:46)
I tried it again. It was like, if you're going on a three hour run, I could learn something new. But then 15 minutes in, to be like, I have no idea what was just covered in this book. I can't concentrate on it.
Like you mentioned, running let’s you kind of get out of yourself. You can let your mind wander. You can think very constructively. I'll work through problems. I'll have questions and dialogues in my head. Sometimes I'll think about absolutely nothing.
My preference is music because I have no problem if I tune it out. I'm not going to go home and get a quiz. What songs did you hear while you're like, I have no idea. I've tried books on tape because I think it would be a productive use of the time, but it doesn't work well.
Jackie Morreale (55:34)
Let’s talk about your work on display at the Heckscher Museum, with the Long Island Biennial, three years ago, right?
Keith Gamache (55:39)
That right there, the Long Island Biennial, it's the Heckscher Museum, which is in Huntington. Every two years they have this exhibition, and I had made some new work. I was excited to apply for it and even more thrilled when they accepted two of my paintings to be included in that show. They happen to be the COVID related paintings that I made.
COVID was great for me in terms of painting, especially when the schools first closed. There were two weeks when we did nothing as we were just trying to figure stuff out. After that, we were just trying to maintain contact with the students. I essentially had Open Studio, where I was logged in. My students knew they could drop in. I would be at my kitchen table with my stuff and I was documenting my work and also sharing it with my students through Google Classroom, showing them the sketches, the development of it.
I had a lot of time to paint and everything was COVID, COVID, COVID. I started to create these graphic type images based on the illustrations, the molecules or the of the virus. Very pattern quilt Pennsylvania Dutch hex like symbol. Very geometric portrayals and layered over that is a type of text. The colors came from things I was seeing. The text came from different articles.
As the virus changed, whether it would be a name like Omicron or Scrabble virus, I would create different layers of text with the images. The first one was Social Distancing and the second one was Isolated Painting. Both of those got accepted.
It was exciting for me because I hadn't shown in a while, these were new pieces. They invited me to be a guest lecturer on Superintendent's Conference Day. I went there and I did two workshops for Long Island art educators in the museum setting. It started just with a 10-to-15-minute slideshow of my work and talking about its development and progression. Then I got to give the art teachers an assignment and interact with them and talk with them. It was a wonderful day and professionally felt very satisfying as well.
Jackie Morreale (58:03)
Here you are as the teacher of all the art teachers, an amazing way to bring your work to life.
Keith Gamache (58:11)
It was fun. Next year, fingers crossed, maybe I'll be in there again.
Jackie Morreale (58:14)
I wouldn't be surprised. Speaking of mentorship, because you've been a mentor for so many people, did you study under any mentors or do you have inspiration from any other artists that you want to share or shout out?
Keith Gamache (58:19)
Yeah. I mentioned Rosalie Goldberg before, from NYU, who was an art history professor. Again, getting me to be not just an observer of art, but writing about things very critically. And the diversity of things that I had to see; it wasn't just catered towards my likes, that was extremely important and influential.
When I was at Vermont Studio Center, there was a sculptor, Tom Butter, whose work, nothing really in common with, I can't pinpoint anything that he necessarily said that had an impact on my work. Tom would come in and do studio visits and just had this booming voice that I loved so much and you knew when Tom was in the building. I always loved it when Tom came into my room for a critique. I felt that he was honest and passionate and I had his full attention and he was fully invested. These are things that influenced me as a teacher, and the type of teacher I want to be. Marking up a student's work with writing to give them feedback. A crit that's really thoughtful and not generic. Those are things that I loved.
There's a painter, Glenn Goldberg, who recently had an MTA mural. He was the first painter that came where I felt like I was taken very seriously with what I was doing.
At that time, I was working with yarn and cardboard. I felt like a fish out of water. I'm up in Vermont. It's mostly landscape painters and still life painters and portrait painters. I'm this 23-year-old kid with cardboard and yarn and he comes in and I just remember going like this to his nose, putting his hand on his chin, looking around and he goes, 'I get what's going on here'. He points to the skeins of yarn on my table and he's like, 'That's your color palette'. Then he points to the cardboard is like, 'This is your canvas'. It felt really good. Somebody gets me. And that was really nice. I love Glenn's paintings.
Jackie Morreale (1:00:21)
He got it. You said his work is at the MTA now?
Keith Gamache (1:00:38)
He recently did a mural in one of the subway stations. A lot of his paintings are small, to see it at that size is incredible. After I finished in Vermont, I went into his studio and saw him, but we personally lost touch. When I did finally decide to get on the Instagram to share my work and stuff, I was like, Let me look up Glenn to see what's going on with him. He's very successful within galleries and in teaching, sustaining his career and doing beautiful work.
Jackie Morreale (1:01:14)
Let's talk more about your art education background. Is there anything you have learned from being an art educator for 32 years now that you didn't know when you began your journey all those years ago?
Keith Gamache (1:01:27)
A lot of things have been reinforcing in terms of concepts or ideas that I had going into it. I became a teacher because I truly enjoyed school.
To go back to another question you asked, if you weren't painting, what else would you be doing? I think forever student would be fun for me.
One of my goals as a teacher has always been to try to get my students to like school, not necessarily as much as I do. You have your kids who do enjoy learning and they're the easy ones to teach. Then there are the ones who don't like learning, and it's like, can I get them? Can this be the 40 minutes of a child's day where they're like, school isn't awful?
That's always been an important part for me and challenge. As I've gotten older, it's a little bit harder for me to see that. When I first started, I was four to eight years older than my students. Culturally, we listen to the same music, watch a lot of the same shows. Then there was a space in between where there was a pretty big gap. Once phones came out, the culture gap was pretty extreme. My students helped to keep me young and aware and in tune with stuff. I didn't have a lot of new stuff that was on the same level with them.
Then when I had children that made teaching fun again because I would talk about their development and stuff would happen at home and I would be like, Ooh, let me bring this into the classroom. I want my teenagers to have the wide-eyed enthusiasm for the world that my two-year-old son has.
As my boys got older, and they were about the same age as my students, now I understand my students a little bit better because culturally I was a little bit more aware because that stuff was in my house.
As an educator, I have my values, my history, and I try to hold and stay true to those things and still be me. I have to respect the fact that they're different. If I'm not willing to attempt to do that, then I'm not going to be able to meaningfully connect with them, the way that I could earlier on. That's something that I just try to remind myself of habitually.
Then you reaching out and connecting with me… this helps, too, because as I near the end of my career, and I do start to question my relevance today, with the importance of newness and freshness. Can this gray haired guy still have that kind of connection and impact? It helps to remind me that I have played an important role in other people's lives. Thank you for that.
Jackie Morreale (1:04:13)
You are so welcome. Thank you for everything, for a lifetime of art exploration, inclusion, teaching, leading by example, role modeling, sculpture, painting, I could just list them all up.
On advice for new artists. There was something you said before, I really am curious, because you paint not by line filling in. As someone who's just getting back into painting, I draw and then I fill in. How does one break through? How does one break through and capture feelings on canvas to such a degree that you can just paint without the filling by number or the color by number?
Keith Gamache (1:04:59)
You're still working representationally. I would say, rather than go into the pencil, water down your paint a little bit with a thin brush and let yourself do your drafting, the initial thing, with a paintbrush. Another thing could just be rather than having so much structure in a linear way, with a bigger brush block in areas of color or values.
For me, staring at the white canvas or the blank page is one of the biggest barriers.
It really is taking that leap because it's that new thing. Whether it's the little doubts that creep in. Is it going to be good? Why am I doing this? I could be doing something else.
Just getting something on there, is an important thing. After that, you can tighten up your strokes as much as you want. You can use the tiniest brushstroke that you want to or need to get your desired result.
If you even just start your work, with some thin watered down paint and relaxing a little bit so it's not so precise. You're probably going to have to fix that several times. Whether it's a color change or you discover something else is off at a certain point.
So why would that first pencil line be so constricted to that there?
Jackie Morreale (1:06:00)
How did you know that I have self doubts and a blank canvas downstairs sitting on my living room table?
Keith Gamache (1:06:22)
Because you're a human being and because you care. This is the thing that is fun about talking and having conversations. You asked me that.
I had a painting professor undergraduate. His name was John Kasere, photorealistic painter. He invited the class to his studio, the last day of school, and he opened up a draw and it was filled with paintbrushes. It had to be like $1,000 worth of paintbrushes. That's my takeaway from the studio. I'm like, He's just showing off his brushes.
This was freshman year of college. I was a dreadful painter, dreadful. He said to me during the crit, 'You're going to be a successful artist because you care'. That's something that always stuck with me.
A lot of times I start my school year, one of my philosophies was TLC. Not the cable channel, not the all female super hip hop group. But: Think, Look, Care. If you can do those things while you're making your art, you're going to make good art. Those were the conceptual ingredients that goes into making successful art.
Jackie Morreale (1:07:24)
Think, look, care. Not, plan, draft, paint. We're talking about what's happening in [your head]. So interesting.
Keith Gamache (1:07:42)
Look might actually be first, but the TLC thing works. I think you have to be engaged in your surroundings. Then I tell my students you have limited time, so you have to be strategic about your ‘looking’.
If you're the third wheel in the friend group, person's driving, the other person's in the front seat, you're sitting in the back seat kind of hoping that somebody might see your head in the rear view mirror... Don't worry about being left out.
Use that as a time to just be looking out the window. What might you see that you didn't notice before if you walk to school? If you always walk on this sidewalk, maybe walk on the other sidewalk. See if you notice something different.
Then be thoughtful about those things, not to the point where you're overthinking, but thought is important. Then finally, genuinely care about those things that you choose to do and follow up on the things that you care about.
Jackie Morreale (1:08:40)
Is that the same advice that you would give to anyone looking to break in as an artist?
Keith Gamache (1:08:45)
That is what I would recommend. Other stuff:
If you like the Instagram thing, I think we're all learning more that, if you're doing things for the likes and that dopamine high, it has its limitations. Not bad, not evil. But you have to evaluate it.
It's not a one size fits all. Some people handle that better than others. That's where that thinking part comes in, too. What role is this playing for me? And use Instagram or other venues of sharing your work in a manner that is right for you.
As far as the actual art making, I think you can stick to something like that, which is more conceptual, that might lead you to better results and some personal happiness than the quest for likes.
Jackie Morreale (1:09:34)
And why else do it? If not for personal results and happiness. Because you can't do anything else, you have to create, right? That's it.
Keith Gamache (1:09:41)
You have to create.
Let yourself paint.
Hold on to the things that come most natural. That's valuable.
Start with that.
Be willing to mess up some things.
Jackie Morreale (1:09:53)
Mr. Gamache, Keith, do you have any new collections that we can look out for, I know we talked about the Firefly art piece at One Mile Gallery's Phantasma exhibit, any other way to support your work?
Keith Gamache (1:09:54)
Yes. I have cut some new Masonite. I did a lot of framing this summer and preparing that work for the show and finishing up other pieces.
The new ones are going to be about snakes. Nature has to do with my son going off to college, his interest in our natural world and that's continuing to develop in different ways. So, snake forms became interesting to me. I'm also changing my medium as well.
Jackie Morreale (1:10:24)
I can't wait to see your snake art and your new medium. Thank you for everything, Mr. Gamache, really, for all that you do every day, for the past 32 years.
Keith Gamache (1:10:34)
Thank you.
Jackie Morreale (1:10:45)
Thank you for imparting so much wisdom and positivity in everything that you do. It really goes a long way.
Keith Gamache (1:10:53)
You're welcome.
Jackie Morreale (1:10:54)
I can't wait to see what you do! Have a wonderful day.
Keith Gamache (1:10:56)
I will keep you posted. Bye, Jackie.
To learn more about Keith Gamache, visit: keithgamache.com
Keith Gamache (52:27)
I think for some people it is. At the end of the day, all artists are craftspeople. Some people are just more comfortable doing it or have to do that. If your options are working behind a desk in a cubicle and that's going to make you miserable or make paintings or other art that might not satisfy your spirit, but helps you pay the bills and keep doing that. Then like that. Yeah, that. I think because I do teach and that has its own skill set and requires its own energy. I've given so much time, and passion to that, too, that then I don't necessarily want to compromise things then on the painting end.
Painting the walls in my house, I hate doing it, but I also hate paying other people to do it because I'm fully capable: It's paint on a brush going on a flat surface. Making artwork is a different thing.
Jackie Morreale (53:23)
It's a different expression. Your exhibitions are many. You've been showing work since 1998. As an artist, what keeps you going? What would you do if you couldn't paint?
Keith Gamache (53:35)
I would just run. I really love running right now. Sometimes even more so than painting. There are times if I'm preparing for a race, I'll be like, if I put this many hours into my painting, maybe I would have realized my painting dreams and goals.
One thing I like about running is that when the run is over, it's gone and it doesn't take up any space. Then the painting can sit there and remind you that it's not finished yet, or it's not quite what you wanted to do, or it hasn't sold or it hasn't been shown.
That's the downside to painting. Running has things you can measure it by. I ran faster. That makes me feel good. It is a little bit more immediate, say, than some of the painting.
Jackie Morreale (54:18)
For me, running is an activity that just boosts creativity. I can work creative problems out in my mind while running without thinking about it. That's why I like it, personally.
Keith Gamache (54:35)
Yeah. Do you listen to books on tape when you run?
Jackie Morreale (54:40)
I usually listen to very loud music and I think about nothing. Do you listen to books on tape while running? I love the idea, if you're on the road.
Keith Gamache (54:46)
I tried it again. It was like, if you're going on a three hour run, I could learn something new. But then 15 minutes in, to be like, I have no idea what was just covered in this book. I can't concentrate on it.
Like you mentioned, running let’s you kind of get out of yourself. You can let your mind wander. You can think very constructively. I'll work through problems. I'll have questions and dialogues in my head. Sometimes I'll think about absolutely nothing.
My preference is music because I have no problem if I tune it out. I'm not going to go home and get a quiz. What songs did you hear while you're like, I have no idea. I've tried books on tape because I think it would be a productive use of the time, but it doesn't work well.
Jackie Morreale (55:34)
Let’s talk about your work on display at the Heckscher Museum, with the Long Island Biennial, three years ago, right?
Keith Gamache (55:39)
That right there, the Long Island Biennial, it's the Heckscher Museum, which is in Huntington. Every two years they have this exhibition, and I had made some new work. I was excited to apply for it and even more thrilled when they accepted two of my paintings to be included in that show. They happen to be the COVID related paintings that I made.
COVID was great for me in terms of painting, especially when the schools first closed. There were two weeks when we did nothing as we were just trying to figure stuff out. After that, we were just trying to maintain contact with the students. I essentially had Open Studio, where I was logged in. My students knew they could drop in. I would be at my kitchen table with my stuff and I was documenting my work and also sharing it with my students through Google Classroom, showing them the sketches, the development of it.
I had a lot of time to paint and everything was COVID, COVID, COVID. I started to create these graphic type images based on the illustrations, the molecules or the of the virus. Very pattern quilt Pennsylvania Dutch hex like symbol. Very geometric portrayals and layered over that is a type of text. The colors came from things I was seeing. The text came from different articles.
As the virus changed, whether it would be a name like Omicron or Scrabble virus, I would create different layers of text with the images. The first one was Social Distancing and the second one was Isolated Painting. Both of those got accepted.
It was exciting for me because I hadn't shown in a while, these were new pieces. They invited me to be a guest lecturer on Superintendent's Conference Day. I went there and I did two workshops for Long Island art educators in the museum setting. It started just with a 10-to-15-minute slideshow of my work and talking about its development and progression. Then I got to give the art teachers an assignment and interact with them and talk with them. It was a wonderful day and professionally felt very satisfying as well.
Jackie Morreale (58:03)
Here you are as the teacher of all the art teachers, an amazing way to bring your work to life.
Keith Gamache (58:11)
It was fun. Next year, fingers crossed, maybe I'll be in there again.
Jackie Morreale (58:14)
I wouldn't be surprised. Speaking of mentorship, because you've been a mentor for so many people, did you study under any mentors or do you have inspiration from any other artists that you want to share or shout out?
Keith Gamache (58:19)
Yeah. I mentioned Rosalie Goldberg before, from NYU, who was an art history professor. Again, getting me to be not just an observer of art, but writing about things very critically. And the diversity of things that I had to see; it wasn't just catered towards my likes, that was extremely important and influential.
When I was at Vermont Studio Center, there was a sculptor, Tom Butter, whose work, nothing really in common with, I can't pinpoint anything that he necessarily said that had an impact on my work. Tom would come in and do studio visits and just had this booming voice that I loved so much and you knew when Tom was in the building. I always loved it when Tom came into my room for a critique. I felt that he was honest and passionate and I had his full attention and he was fully invested. These are things that influenced me as a teacher, and the type of teacher I want to be. Marking up a student's work with writing to give them feedback. A crit that's really thoughtful and not generic. Those are things that I loved.
There's a painter, Glenn Goldberg, who recently had an MTA mural. He was the first painter that came where I felt like I was taken very seriously with what I was doing.
At that time, I was working with yarn and cardboard. I felt like a fish out of water. I'm up in Vermont. It's mostly landscape painters and still life painters and portrait painters. I'm this 23-year-old kid with cardboard and yarn and he comes in and I just remember going like this to his nose, putting his hand on his chin, looking around and he goes, 'I get what's going on here'. He points to the skeins of yarn on my table and he's like, 'That's your color palette'. Then he points to the cardboard is like, 'This is your canvas'. It felt really good. Somebody gets me. And that was really nice. I love Glenn's paintings.
Jackie Morreale (1:00:21)
He got it. You said his work is at the MTA now?
Keith Gamache (1:00:38)
He recently did a mural in one of the subway stations. A lot of his paintings are small, to see it at that size is incredible. After I finished in Vermont, I went into his studio and saw him, but we personally lost touch. When I did finally decide to get on the Instagram to share my work and stuff, I was like, Let me look up Glenn to see what's going on with him. He's very successful within galleries and in teaching, sustaining his career and doing beautiful work.
Jackie Morreale (1:01:14)
Let's talk more about your art education background. Is there anything you have learned from being an art educator for 32 years now that you didn't know when you began your journey all those years ago?
Keith Gamache (1:01:27)
A lot of things have been reinforcing in terms of concepts or ideas that I had going into it. I became a teacher because I truly enjoyed school.
To go back to another question you asked, if you weren't painting, what else would you be doing? I think forever student would be fun for me.
One of my goals as a teacher has always been to try to get my students to like school, not necessarily as much as I do. You have your kids who do enjoy learning and they're the easy ones to teach. Then there are the ones who don't like learning, and it's like, can I get them? Can this be the 40 minutes of a child's day where they're like, school isn't awful?
That's always been an important part for me and challenge. As I've gotten older, it's a little bit harder for me to see that. When I first started, I was four to eight years older than my students. Culturally, we listen to the same music, watch a lot of the same shows. Then there was a space in between where there was a pretty big gap. Once phones came out, the culture gap was pretty extreme. My students helped to keep me young and aware and in tune with stuff. I didn't have a lot of new stuff that was on the same level with them.
Then when I had children that made teaching fun again because I would talk about their development and stuff would happen at home and I would be like, Ooh, let me bring this into the classroom. I want my teenagers to have the wide-eyed enthusiasm for the world that my two-year-old son has.
As my boys got older, and they were about the same age as my students, now I understand my students a little bit better because culturally I was a little bit more aware because that stuff was in my house.
As an educator, I have my values, my history, and I try to hold and stay true to those things and still be me. I have to respect the fact that they're different. If I'm not willing to attempt to do that, then I'm not going to be able to meaningfully connect with them, the way that I could earlier on. That's something that I just try to remind myself of habitually.
Then you reaching out and connecting with me… this helps, too, because as I near the end of my career, and I do start to question my relevance today, with the importance of newness and freshness. Can this gray haired guy still have that kind of connection and impact? It helps to remind me that I have played an important role in other people's lives. Thank you for that.
Jackie Morreale (1:04:13)
You are so welcome. Thank you for everything, for a lifetime of art exploration, inclusion, teaching, leading by example, role modeling, sculpture, painting, I could just list them all up.
On advice for new artists. There was something you said before, I really am curious, because you paint not by line filling in. As someone who's just getting back into painting, I draw and then I fill in. How does one break through? How does one break through and capture feelings on canvas to such a degree that you can just paint without the filling by number or the color by number?
Keith Gamache (1:04:59)
You're still working representationally. I would say, rather than go into the pencil, water down your paint a little bit with a thin brush and let yourself do your drafting, the initial thing, with a paintbrush. Another thing could just be rather than having so much structure in a linear way, with a bigger brush block in areas of color or values.
For me, staring at the white canvas or the blank page is one of the biggest barriers.
It really is taking that leap because it's that new thing. Whether it's the little doubts that creep in. Is it going to be good? Why am I doing this? I could be doing something else.
Just getting something on there, is an important thing. After that, you can tighten up your strokes as much as you want. You can use the tiniest brushstroke that you want to or need to get your desired result.
If you even just start your work, with some thin watered down paint and relaxing a little bit so it's not so precise. You're probably going to have to fix that several times. Whether it's a color change or you discover something else is off at a certain point.
So why would that first pencil line be so constricted to that there?
Jackie Morreale (1:06:00)
How did you know that I have self doubts and a blank canvas downstairs sitting on my living room table?
Keith Gamache (1:06:22)
Because you're a human being and because you care. This is the thing that is fun about talking and having conversations. You asked me that.
I had a painting professor undergraduate. His name was John Kasere, photorealistic painter. He invited the class to his studio, the last day of school, and he opened up a draw and it was filled with paintbrushes. It had to be like $1,000 worth of paintbrushes. That's my takeaway from the studio. I'm like, He's just showing off his brushes.
This was freshman year of college. I was a dreadful painter, dreadful. He said to me during the crit, 'You're going to be a successful artist because you care'. That's something that always stuck with me.
A lot of times I start my school year, one of my philosophies was TLC. Not the cable channel, not the all female super hip hop group. But: Think, Look, Care. If you can do those things while you're making your art, you're going to make good art. Those were the conceptual ingredients that goes into making successful art.
Jackie Morreale (1:07:24)
Think, look, care. Not, plan, draft, paint. We're talking about what's happening in [your head]. So interesting.
Keith Gamache (1:07:42)
Look might actually be first, but the TLC thing works. I think you have to be engaged in your surroundings. Then I tell my students you have limited time, so you have to be strategic about your ‘looking’.
If you're the third wheel in the friend group, person's driving, the other person's in the front seat, you're sitting in the back seat kind of hoping that somebody might see your head in the rear view mirror... Don't worry about being left out.
Use that as a time to just be looking out the window. What might you see that you didn't notice before if you walk to school? If you always walk on this sidewalk, maybe walk on the other sidewalk. See if you notice something different.
Then be thoughtful about those things, not to the point where you're overthinking, but thought is important. Then finally, genuinely care about those things that you choose to do and follow up on the things that you care about.
Jackie Morreale (1:08:40)
Is that the same advice that you would give to anyone looking to break in as an artist?
Keith Gamache (1:08:45)
That is what I would recommend. Other stuff:
If you like the Instagram thing, I think we're all learning more that, if you're doing things for the likes and that dopamine high, it has its limitations. Not bad, not evil. But you have to evaluate it.
It's not a one size fits all. Some people handle that better than others. That's where that thinking part comes in, too. What role is this playing for me? And use Instagram or other venues of sharing your work in a manner that is right for you.
As far as the actual art making, I think you can stick to something like that, which is more conceptual, that might lead you to better results and some personal happiness than the quest for likes.
Jackie Morreale (1:09:34)
And why else do it? If not for personal results and happiness. Because you can't do anything else, you have to create, right? That's it.
Keith Gamache (1:09:41)
You have to create.
Let yourself paint.
Hold on to the things that come most natural. That's valuable.
Start with that.
Be willing to mess up some things.
Jackie Morreale (1:09:53)
Mr. Gamache, Keith, do you have any new collections that we can look out for, I know we talked about the Firefly art piece at One Mile Gallery's Phantasma exhibit, any other way to support your work?
Keith Gamache (1:09:54)
Yes. I have cut some new Masonite. I did a lot of framing this summer and preparing that work for the show and finishing up other pieces.
The new ones are going to be about snakes. Nature has to do with my son going off to college, his interest in our natural world and that's continuing to develop in different ways. So, snake forms became interesting to me. I'm also changing my medium as well.
Jackie Morreale (1:10:24)
I can't wait to see your snake art and your new medium. Thank you for everything, Mr. Gamache, really, for all that you do every day, for the past 32 years.
Keith Gamache (1:10:34)
Thank you.
Jackie Morreale (1:10:45)
Thank you for imparting so much wisdom and positivity in everything that you do. It really goes a long way.
Keith Gamache (1:10:53)
You're welcome.
Jackie Morreale (1:10:54)
I can't wait to see what you do! Have a wonderful day.
Keith Gamache (1:10:56)
I will keep you posted. Bye, Jackie.
To learn more about Keith Gamache, visit: keithgamache.com
Continued reading, recommended by Keith Gamache:
Savage Inequalities.
By Jonathan Kozol |
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.
By Dave Eggers |
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