Kevin Kehoe

HEBER CITY, UT

Utah artist Kevin Kehoe is a native New Englander and graduate of the Art Institute of Boston, where he became the school’s first student published in the Society of Illustrators Student Annual. Since then, he has been inspired by such masters as Edward Hopper, Maynard Dixon, John Singer Sargent, Andrew Wyeth, John Register and Georgia O’Keeffe.

After art school, Kehoe embarked on a 30-year award-winning advertising career, which he credits as the ultimate boot camp for his discipline as a painter. During those years, he lived coast-to-coast and in Park City, Utah, and fell in love with the West’s ability to inspire through its quality of light and majestic beauty. In 2011, he returned to Utah full-time with his wife Julie, and daughter Kate. Two years later, he couldn’t ignore the beckoning to paint. So, after not picking up a brush for three decades, he set up a studio to devote himself fully to his painting pursuits.

In 2016, Western Therapy—a series of 12 paintings—was chosen to be half of the inaugural exhibition for the new Southern Utah University Museum of Art and was juxtaposed with the work of Utah artist Jimmie Jones. Since then, Kehoe’s art has been acquired by the Booth Western Art Museum and the State of Utah for their permanent collections. The painting acquired by the State of Utah currently hangs in the Governor’s Mansion. He has had solo exhibits at Modern West Fine Art in Salt Lake City and Altamira Fine Art in Scottsdale. For three years, he has shown at ArtsThrive at the Albuquerque Museum of Fine Art. His work was most recently featured in the prestigious 2024 Masters of the American West Exhibition at The Autry Museum of the American West in Glendale, California.

As a painter, he says, “I allow things to come to me. I allow things to stop me. My paintings celebrate the art of being struck by the natural and authentic beauty I see and feel in the world. I crave authenticity and like to think my subject matter has a soulfulness and a story to tell. My style and what I choose to paint can best be described as contemporary Western Art and modern Americana.”

Southwest Art and Western Art Collector have featured Kehoe’s work, and Southwest Art profiled him as its “Artist to Watch” in its February 2018 issue. His studio is in the Old Firehouse Building in Utah’s majestic Heber Valley. At night, he retreats to a log cabin in the foothills of the Uinta Mountains, where he looks across the Valley he loves. He likes to say about his life as a painter, “I have the West in my blood, and I’m better off for it.”