Keeler  has made Italy one of his sustained painting projects since 1992, conducting landscape and figure workshops in the medieval hill town of Barga in northern Tuscany and just outside Todi in Umbria, while his wider travels have taken him from Lake Como in the north to Taormina in the south. 

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Italy also deepens the allegorical strand of Keeler's work. A passionate student of the Italian Renaissance, he incorporates aspects of the classical tradition into his own compositions, producing paintings that place mythological figures in contemporary American settings — antiquity and the present in unexpected conversation. 

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Throughout, Italy serves as an intensification of what defines Keeler's art everywhere: the pursuit of light. For Keeler, light is never simply a backdrop — it is the true subject, with the scene itself playing a secondary role. He seeks out the Golden Hour of late afternoon or early morning, when raking light accentuates the drama of any given scene. The particular clarity and warmth of Italian light make it an ideal theater for that lifelong pursuit.