can anyone help understand what it means to "key" a painting or have the "key" set ?????

I believe this refers to value keys,as in high key, middle key or low key. A high key painting would be predominantly light (as in the light values on a grey scale, as a reference), a middle key would fall in the mid range of values (think middle grey and the values on either side) and low key is in the dark range with values past middle grey. It doesn't mean that you can't use colors whose values fall outside the range, but the predominant value range is within the key. A full range of value uses color that utlizes light, middle and dark values, and high contrast of value refers to dark and light color contrast. A really good reference for this is Johannes Itten's "Elements of Color" where he discusses the 7 color contrasts. Hope this helps.

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