Welcome to the Silent E-mail Auction for "Magnum Opus"

This auction closed on August 31st 2005 with no winning bids. The reserve price of $1000.00 was not met. Until another auction is arranged, the artist will still sell for $3000.00 and the rights to the image for another $3000.00.

Please send any questions or offers to eted@tedkeylon.com

Auction ended August 31st. The conditions of the auction were as follows: The winning bidder wins the painting only and NOT the rights to the image. The artist retains all rights to the image including but not limited to the selling of posters, t-shirts, and assorted prints. This means that the artist will have 30 days past the close of the auction to have slides made of the painting and digital file to use for archival purposes. If the winning bidder wishes to purchase the rights as well as the painting itself, the artist will sell the complete rights for $1500, to be added to the winning bid amount. Please direct any questions regarding the bidding to Ted Keylon, (217) 528-8466 or (217) 836-4799, or e-mail at eted@thespectra.net (Also contact if interested in prints of any of the pictures you see on these pages.)

"Magnum Opus," a painting of Lincoln from the Gardner photograph, 1864, by Ted Keylon was first on display at Andiamo!, 204 South 6th Street, Springfield, IL. Since then it has been on displayed at August Restaurant, The Loft, Trout Lily Café, and Phil's Lounge.

The Story of the Painting

     Just after having secured the acting position at the new Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum, local artist Michael Manning asked me if I was going to paint Lincoln's portrait. I thought about William Crook Jr. and his Lincoln portrait he worked on while I watched. At the time I felt it was too much like tourist art and not enough like the Fine Art I had been exposed to in college.

     However, Crook's defense persuaded me to see work of this kind in a different light. Discussions regarding art sales also came up among those in the local art movement Manifest Destiny in which it was stated that even selling your art for money at all was selling out. As I looked around at the would-be artists, wanting things (like cigarettes, a place to live, rides in someone's car) I had to decide that selling art, in itself, was just something that an artist must do to survive - whether that means selling it for money or for cigarettes, a place to live, and rides in other people's cars.

   Serendipticiously, the painting was painted 143 years to the day after Lincoln surprised his Cabinet by reading to them the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. Ironically, one of the performances I deliver at the museum is in the re-creation of this scene in the Cabinet Room at the White House on July 22nd, 1862.

     In Mikel Weisser's recent article about me in the Illinois Times, he refers to the Emancipation as Lincoln's "magnum opus," and so I decided to make that the title of the painting as it represents a sort of magnum opus of my own, wherein my name as an artist has its first real chance of attaining value in the local art market.

- Ted Keylon [To see more paintings, click here]

 

This photo is currently available as a digital print.

So is this one, click here