All summer long, acclaimed artist Keith Mayerson is living and working in Elaine de Kooning’s former East Hampton home. He’s channeling Elaine’s energy and keeping her legacy alive by making new paintings inspired by her, her friends, and the sites in and around her Hamptons home.

Mayerson, whose work is in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum, MoMA, and LACMA, paints major American cultural figures, like Obama, James Dean, and now Elaine. His goal is to pay tribute to Elaine and her friends—women who changed history and who are finally getting their due. The works form a new series, titled: My American Dream: A Glimpse of Elaine de Kooning and her Circle.

Upon going to Elaine’s residency, Keith decided to approach Elaine and her circle as another chapter in his artistic narrative and give light to women who have changed history. Keith hopes to unpack the famous Hans Namuth pictures of Elaine and Bill, Jackson and Lee, forefronting the women as much as the men, as these odes to their pairings attest to the team spirit of their creations. Painting the Pollock Krasner house and barn also en plein air, Keith aspires to gather the aura of these now shrines to a movement and the most famous couple of American painting and add them to his narrative series entitled “My American Dream”.

Keith Mayerson was a Semiotics and Studio Art Major at Brown University where he received his BA in 1988. In 1993, he earned his MFA from the University of California Irvine, and is now Professor of Art at the University of Southern California and Chair of Painting and Drawing.

Keith Mayerson’s work is featured in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Columbus Museum of Art, The Davis Museum of Art of Wellesley College, MA, and the American University Museum, Washington, D.C.