“Together in the World; meht ot elbisivnI” by Lev Keatts

Photography credit to Muzi Li Rowe

Levi (Lev) Keatts is a painter originally from the Appalachian region of Virginia. Through their mixed media painting practice, they critically explore the arbitrary, moralized boundaries between what is considered ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural,’ particularly with regards to queerness. Their work reimagines the bodily disconnect that many trans-people experience as potentiality rather than confinement. Here the ‘othered-body’ is fantastical, without edges, and able to shift at will. The paintings consider normal human behaviors that are often deemed “other” and juxtapose them with similar behaviors in plants, animals, and land often deemed “natural”, binaries that a do not give justice to their complexities.

Lev received their a BFA in Painting and Printmaking (with a minor in Mathematics) from Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts (VCUarts) and their MFA from the Maria Manetti Shrem Art Studio Program, at the University of California-Davis. Their most recent work ‘They wear black and we wear all the other colors’ was on view at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art in the MFA exhibition, “Worlds, Reconstructed” (6/4/2026 - 6/22/2026). They won the prestigious LeShelle & Gary May Art Purchase Prize, a monetary and acquisition prize into the permanent collection at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art.