Sweet simplicity

A painter who combines the primitivism of a child’s scribbles with the stark, spare compositions that instantly reference Picasso, Henri Rousseau and Matisse, Johnston William Keith has an overriding preoccupation that seems to be a whimsy-infused innocence achieved in both technique and content. So as not to seem too light, Keith is aware that “serious” work must also strike some note other than simple, decorative prettiness, and thus he embellishes his collaged images of solemn, almond-eyed children with a garnish of poetic melancholy. With often overly precious titles such as “French School Girl With Green Bow” and “Emily Dickinson,” Keith uses middlebrow allusions to allow potential buyers to find their own knowledge and expectations about art parroted back at them. The fact that these are not just any schoolgirls, but French schoolgirls ones gives some of the work a half-baked pretentiousness that is off-putting next to the quaint and modest techniques and images Keith uses in other works. Even Keith’s oppressively large signature seems an effort to affirm the presence of “artist” with a capital “A.”

This suggestion of an artist trying hard to impress often runs counter to the air of playfulness Keith aims for — and often achieves. The work does have charms that shine through his cutely outsized forms; the bumblebee as big as the mug it dives headfirst into in the engaging “A Cup of Bee,” or a zinnia painted as seen through a fisheye lens with its fat red petals and yellow center looming in the painting’s foreground. “Zinnia I” is indicative of Keith’s characteristic style, which unites crude pencil sketches and painted scraps of paper added like patches to the work. In “Zinnia,” swatches of wallpaper have also been applied to the wood panel, ornamenting the central focus of the sweetly offbeat flower. With his blend of rudimentary sketches and painting, Keith explicitly reveals the evolution of his work, a laying bare of the technique that gives the work a substantial share of its appeal.

That capricious, humble, mix-and-match style, with its debt to the similar art-from-scrap techniques of folk artists, is reiterated in Keith’s choice of materials: pencil, plywood, masonite, plain brown paper. These crude elements have a simplicity that pairs up nicely with the purposeful naiveté of images like “Queen Bee,” a black and yellow insect whose head has been substituted with a pink square of paper adorned with a woman’s face. As in almost all of Keith’s human (and half-human) figures, the woman’s head is cocked improbably, uncomfortably to the side as if to better sniff a nearby flower. This quizzical, off-kilter gesture gives the work a stylized quality that suggests the comparable contorted, dance-like gestures of Japanese prints.

Alongside these contorted figures, the use of the pupil-less almond eyes in Keith’s figures and their blank expressions sample both Picasso’s more abstract work like “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” and his more naturalistic paintings like a 1906 portrait of Gertrude Stein. While the work, for that reason, has an instantly familiar feeling, Keith endows his paintings with enough of an oddball personal touch to brand each canvas his own. The pieces that work best either have a harmoniously just-right use of color (as in the far more pleasing “French Schoolgirl with Orange Bow,” which works better than the green-bowed girl), or a crude sketchiness that strikes a bargain with the material. Such is the case with the winsome “Boy with Bow Tie,” whose entire body is outlined in pencil, only his face, hands and a shockingly crimson bowtie lucky enough to warrant color. Such images have a scrappy and plaintive appeal that characterizes other sweet-sour works.

Not the kind of artist to astound with his technique or ideas, Keith nevertheless creates airy, sweet images that work best when simplicity reigns, rendered with an element of charming, affectation-free earnestness.

Johnston William Keith’s Alla Prima runs through July 22 at Galerie Timothy Tew, 309 E. Paces Ferry Road #130. 404-869-0511. Hours: Tues.-Sat. 11 a.m.-5 p.m.