Deanne McKeown

I was born in Missouri and lived in early childhood in the Pinal Mountains of Central Arizona. The memories of those years made an indelible impression…the cliffs and canyons of Arizona have always formed my sense of “home” and now, the inspiration for my work.

Although many of my early years were spent in Missouri, it was home I came back to when my husband, Byron, and I moved to Sedona in 1979. Over the years, Byron and I have owned three galleries in Sedona and are presently pursuing our personal careers as artists.

Through the years I have explored a variety of media – painting and printmaking ( my major areas of study at the Kansas City Art Institute), fiber, leaded glass, graphic design and most recently, sculpture. For many years I worked in the field of Medical Illustration, both as director of the Design and Illustration department at the University of Kansas Medical School and as a free lance Illustrator of medical books.

I like change, hiking and picnics, travel, Native American poetry, reading , collecting children’s books, garden railways, planting, but not weeding, building stuff, puns and peppermint ice cream – not necessarily in that order.

I care about conservation, energy alternatives, responsive government, this generation and the next and the next and the next….

I hope to sustain a sense of wonder, to see more deeply, to grow old with grace and humor… and maybe even once, to create
something really wonderful.

“None of us perceive the world in exactly the same way. Our oneness lies in a yearning to touch and to understand. My work is an endeavor to share my thoughts and vision through form and color and relationships, hoping to charge my images with meaning which will reach across the spaces between us.

In looking back over a lifetime of working and exploring, I realize that I have never created art — art has been, and is now, creating me.”