Keith West studied fine art, drawing and painting at Coventry College of Art. He exhibited at various London galleries and churches, such as St Martin-in-the-Fields and Westminster Abbey, among others. He was a lecturer and, later, head of arts at the Camden Institute. He was commissioned in 2008 by the Tate Gallery Archive to write a memoir about close friend and international art critic Barbara Reise and of his experience as an art student during the influence of a radical conceptualist philosophy at Coventry and its impact on British art and art education. The document was published in a narrative version,l, Light Under a Bushel in 2020.
This is a tour de force which imaginatively and convincingly fills the gaps in our knowledge of Caravaggio's life and that of his model, student and lover, Francesco Boneri. It is a rollicking story which vividly brings to life the violent contrasts of their time
