In style, subject matter, quality and inspiration, Keith Rocco’s
work evokes the masters of narrative, historical art: N.C. Wyeth,
de Neuville and Pyle. An American painter and storyteller, Rocco
has continued their legacy, creating visually stunning works which
capture the drama of history, recording with care and nuance the
details of his vision. It is a vision that has moved him through
a lifetime to become one of the country’s most sought after
narrative painters today.
Rocco’s passion for history and art began early. At the age
of nine, for Christmas he talked his parents into getting him The
Golden Book of the Civil War he had spied in a local five &
ten. The book, filled with photos and drawings, inspired the budding,
young artist to meticulously copy the pictures. At that time in
life, he knew little of the traditions of historical art; research
accuracy, emotion and artistic vision, yet instinctively as a child,
he practiced the tenets of the craft as if he knew that someday
it would be his future.
A love for history and passion for art saw Rocco through the usual
turmoil of adolescence, when he sold his first works, copies of
the masters, to his high school teacher. At age 14 he began what
today has become a solid collection of Civil War and Napoleonic
artifacts along with an eclectic mix of costuming from a variety
of periods. To finance his collection through his teens, Rocco sold
copies of his drawings through classified ads in historical publications.
A cavalry saber, his first buy, still sits beside a cabinet crammed
with the fruits of years of acquisitions.
It is these small and seemingly insignificant artifacts that peak
Rocco’s imagination. They provide the textual substance that
bonds his readings and research with life. “There is no better
way to achieve an insight into a period and its people than by holding
an artifact in your hands. For the artist, if you don’t know
the grade of cloth used on a garment you can’t understand
how it will hang or fold. It is the manufacturing processes and
available materials of a period that are most crucial to recreating
the essence of an era.” says Rocco.
The work that goes into one of Rocco’s canvasses is prodigious.
Because he never puts brush to canvas without exhaustive research,
he finds he must begin his planning months and occasionally years
before he may start a painting. This work often requires the help
of professional historians and museum curators worldwide. Detectives
for information thought to be lost to time, they often help in unusual
ways. The small cup of earth on his studio shelf, for instance,
was sent to confirm the color of the soil at Jamestown Colonial
site.
The result of all this research and work has been gold for Rocco’s
art. In 1985 Rocco was proclaimed by the French magazine Uniformes,
as an “artist in the tradition of Remington and Detaille.”
His works currently hang in every major collection of historical
art in the country and several abroad. These include the Andrew
Mellon Foundation, the Pentagon, the Atlanta Historical Society,
the House of Representatives, Gettysburg National Park, the City
of Fredericksburg, Virginia, the National Guard Heritage Collection,
the U.S. Army War College and numerous private collections. In 1992,
Rocco set about producing the largest paintings of his career to
date with a commission to create 3 murals for the Wisconsin Veterans
Museum in Madison which opened in June of 1993. Yet this project
was dwarfed in scale by the 1999 completion of Pamplin Historical
Park for which he created over 4,000 square feet of murals divided
among six individual paintings. In 2003, he designed the centerpiece
mural “Gettysburg”, for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential
Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois. University of Illinois
Press, University of Georgia Press, Chapel Hill, Military History,
American History Illustrated, Napoleon Journal, Soldats Napoleonien,
Le Livre Chez Vous and other publishing houses have all featured
his work on their covers and dust jackets.
Rocco’s paintings have been displayed in special exhibits
across the country, including the 1992 Birth of a Nation exhibition
in Washington, D.C., and a one man show entitled On Campaign at
the Cyclorama Building in Gettysburg National Park in 1994. His
talents have not gone unnoticed by that most critical institution
responsible for keeping this nation’s history preserved, the
National Park Service. Numerous contracts have been awarded to Rocco
by the Park’s Design Center on the strength of his mastery
of figure painting and understanding of historic subjects.
His painterly and fluid style and extensive research of his subject
has made Rocco one of the nation’s most respected narrative
artists. His characters are a visual looking glass onto the endless
variety of human nature; a nature which can be as noble as it can
be brutal. It is this honest rendition of subject along with a painting
tradition reminiscent of the best that America has produced, that
keeps Rocco in the forefront of his contemporaries. Originally from
Illinois, today Keith Rocco lives and paints in Virginia’s
Shenandoah Valley.