Ian McKeever (born 1946 in Yorkshire) is a contemporary British painter and a Royal Academician since 2003. Born and raised in Withernsea, he studied English literature before starting as an artist in 1968. Since 1990 he has lived and worked in Hartgrove, Dorset.
His early work combined landscape photography and drawing, as in the Field Series (1978) and Waterfalls (1979), shaped by the writings of Robert Smithson. He then moved to landscape photographs overpainted by hand, in groups such as the Lapland Paintings (1985–1986) and History of Rocks (1986–1988), where the painterly gesture takes centre stage. From the Door Paintings (1990–1994) onward, his work concentrates on pure painting, hovering between abstraction and a residual figuration. This direction continues in the Temple Paintings (2004–2006) and Twelve-Standing (2009–2012), with fewer recognisable motifs and a growing interest in light.
McKeever has also written essays on art, including the 1982 manifesto Black and White...Or how to paint with a hammer and the lectures collected in In Praise of Painting (2005). His work is held by collections such as the Tate Gallery and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, and his 1990 retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery was a landmark in his career.