Keith Vaughan

“I ask myself which of my pictures would I be willing to stand beside in public, say Piccadilly Circus, for all to see. The least personal ones, I suppose, abstract landscapes. The continual use of the male figure... retains always the stain of a homosexual conception...‘K.V. paints nude young men.’ Perfectly true, but I feel I must hide my head in shame. Inescapable, I suppose-social guilt of the invert.”

-Keith Vaughan, 1953

Keith Vaughan painted the male nude-one of his favorite subjects-in a uniquely abstracted style. His figure studies reflect a sense of intimacy and desire in relationship to his subjects.

Vaughan is also noted for his diaries, written from 1939 to the time of his death. Over 61 notebooks, he chronicled his struggles as a gay man living in a postwar Britain characterized by acute hostility toward and criminalization of homosexuality.