Aidan O’Keeffe (b.1997) is a mixed-media artist born, raised, and living in Ottawa, on unceded Anishinaabek land. Growing up in a creative and culturally engaged household, music and art were present from an early age and became a central language of expression and a way to be understood. 

Largely self-taught, O’Keeffe’s practice developed outside institutional frameworks. Working and living in solitude, his work reflects a sustained commitment to survival following a decade of struggle: translating a lived experience of drug addiction and neurodiversity (ADHD, bipolar II, OCD, autism) + the cultivated capacity to transform that isolation into a richly detailed visual world. All the while grounding personal experience within broader themes of resilience, perception, and faith.
He is represented by Galerie St-Laurent + Hill in Ottawa.

bio:

I make art because it helps me to feel okay. 

Creating has always been a beacon of light for me, and through me. It’s a personal meditation and holy sacrament. It’s how I process hard feelings, good feelings, and not feeling. And also why I’ve always made it throughout my life in one form or another. In darkness it has given me hope and in sobriety it's the thing that I gravitate towards like a sun. It’s the compass of truth that's always pointed me in a right direction and been there to remind me who I am anytime I stray too far from the path.

For me, It is the act of letting go, where Inspiration doesn’t come from direct references, but instead emotions, memories, and places that don’t exist which I’ve never been but that I know well. I've lived through screens, and my imagination more than I have in our physical world - so, while the act of creating is itself therapeutic, on another level I am also making the place that I've been living in, and the one I’m trying to shape now.

Whatever it might be, and whatever you call it, it’s definitely magic. I encourage everyone to find their own meaning in my work. Most of the time, I don't even understand the significance myself until a piece is finished and some time has passed.

artist statement:

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