William McKeown made paintings, drawings, prints and installations that captured the openness and life-enhancing power of nature. Many of his paintings are scaled roughly to the size of the human chest, as if mirroring the capacity of our lungs to breathe in air. Sometimes presented in ‘room installations’, wooden structures with wallpaper, windows and artificial light that mimic a clinical setting, his works act as windows out onto the world – an escape from the repression and mundanity of everyday life and into the lightness and expansiveness of the sky, using subtle gradations of tone to create moments of exquisite beauty and bliss. Current/forthcoming exhibitions include a solo show at The MAC, Belfast (9 October 2025 – 4 January 2026) and Coalescence: Happenstance, curated by Paul O’Neill at Shimmer Shimmer, Rotterdam, The Netherlands (1 December 2024 – 30 November 2025). Solo exhibitions include Château La Coste, Aix-en-Provence, curated by Jonathan Anderson; Dallas Museum of Art; LOEWE Design District Store, Miami; Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh; mima, Middlesbrough; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin; Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; Lismore Castle Arts, Lismore and Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast. In 2005, McKeown represented Northern Ireland in the 51st Venice Biennale.
