Mother’s Handiwork (2025) by Allie Fair Keel

Gouache and graphite on paper

30” x 22.5” 

Allie Fair makes art to understand the enigmatic and muddled within us, and the ways our internal landscape is informed and shaped by historical and systemic forces well beyond the individual. Born in Atlanta, GA, encouraged and nurtured early on by family and family friends who were artists, feminist community organizers, and educators, Allie Fair found an early home in art. After leaving home for New York City and attending art school, Allie Fair felt disconnected from the path of a professional artist, instead pursuing craft, art making as personal practice, and emotional wellbeing and mental health. She worked as a craftsperson for the John Derian Company for many years, earned a master’s degree in school counseling and worked in that role in schools in Brooklyn and Kingston, started a family, continued her education in mental health counseling, and began work as a therapist. A reconnection with art making was found in the support and collaboration of a long-time friend and artist Ana O’Keefe, coming together as The House Opposite, to create murals and surface design inspired by the potential for finding magic and spiritual meaning in the everyday. With The House Opposite, and in her individual practice, Allie Fair is deeply interested in imbuing daily life and environments with visual talismans of story, wonder, grief, and the sublime of life that can often get lost in the everyday. In her works on paper, Allie Fair incorporates portraiture, family photographs, archetype, and personal symbology, often drawing from and collaging with her own photographs.