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David McKay, RCA
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SPRING AIR
OLD BUILDINGS, COLD NIGHT
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GETTING READY FOR CHRISTMAS
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DEER APPLES
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WAITING FOR THE DEER
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FROZEN APPLES
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LIGHT ON IN THE BARN
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FOR THE DEER
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LEFT BEHIND |
THINKING |
THE FLORIDA SERIES
STIFF BREEZE
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SMOKE IN THE AIR
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FISHING IN THE FOG
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DOWN ON THE BEACH
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SPEED LIMIT 10
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INGE AND SHARON
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THE NEW BRUNSWICK SERIES
TWO CANOES ON THE ISLAND |
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THE OLD BUILDINGS AT MORNING
THE WIDOW
AN ISLAND IN MAUGERVILLE
FIDDLEHEAD SEASON
THE SKY LOOKS LIKE MORE SNOW (1987)
LILACS IN UPPER GAGETOWN
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RETIRED V-STERN |
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BROTHERS
FOG BURNING OFF
ENDURING REFLECTIONS
MARCH AIR
MORNING LIGHTS
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WATER UP ON THE ISLAND |
ALONG THE ROAD IN SHEFFIELD |
Nikki Thériault chats with David McKay before the opening of his exhibition "Fields and Generations"
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CHRISTMAS EVE ON THE ISLAND
MELTING RINK The Telegraph Journal's Marty Klinkenberg featured an interview with David in conjunction with TNB's Hockey Dreams on March 17, 2011,
The gentle, constant roll of time is most poetic when characterized by the many generations of a family. David McKay finds the same poetry in the light and shade of his painterly fields. His watercolour and egg tempera works present nature in time; they witness stone walls continually added to by generations enclosing the beauty of their fields; they present the permanent weight of stone and tree-trunk, like a grandfather at a family’s foundation, while watching the joy of crows wheeling or leaves dappling overhead like grandchildren at play. Here is freedom in the enduring beauty of time. Leopold Kowolik, 2010
EARLY NOVEMBER ORCHARD
ALMOST THE END OF SUMMER
MORNING FOG ALONG THE RIVER
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MOODY MORNING ARTIST STATEMENT When I paint, my mind is not in the world of my studio with brushes, paints, pencils and mixing jars, it is in the world of my subject. My subject material is the New Brunswick landscape; it's people and buildings. These are the things I have lived with all of my life and to which I feel a very strong emotional closeness. I use the beautifully sensitive egg tempera painting medium for the more detailed or refined images and I use watercolours when I need something looser and more spontaneous. These two different painting mediums seem to complement my temperament, are a refreshing change from each other, and give me the freedom to stretch out in any direction that I choose. Throughout my career I have focused on creating artwork rather than creating an image of the artist. I belong to only one artist's group (The Royal Canadian Academy of Arts) and never allow political issues to interfere in the realm of my art making. I have very rarely applied for grants or artistic positions and I find this type of activity distracting from what I want to accomplish. I have painted, what must look like to the casual observer, the same fields, trees, rocks, buildings and skies for over thirty years. Yet I always hope and strive for, that bit of extra insight and talent that will render my feelings and emotions for these things just perfectly. David McKay, RCA
Born in Barkers Point on the Naskwaak River, David McKay has lived in New Brunswick all his life and he rarely travels. His first exhibition was in 1971 and was such a success that he gave up his job as a structural engineering technician to pursue art professionally. That he was entirely self-trained was an added measure of the artist's potential. For the past thirty-five years, therefore, David McKay has been exploring and developing the subject matter that has interested him since his early success. He began working in watercolour and acrylic but very quickly discovered that he was most attracted to egg tempera paintings. There was an element of the smoothness in the linear, layered paint that made the paintings so interesting to David. For a while he worked in acrylic using tempera painting techniques. Thinned-down acrylic shares some of the qualities of the egg-yolk based paint but tempera has a transparency that acrylic can never approximate. So, by the late seventies, David took the final step into the involved world of tempera, preparing his own paints from selected pigments, distilled water and egg yolks. Thousands of eggs later and David has not touched acrylic again. In tempera paintings, myriads of tiny brushstrokes layer together, each one revealing something of the colours beneath. When the paint hardens into a uniform surface, the painting glows as light plays off each translucent brushstroke. This technique has been admired for its inner radiance for centuries and due to the stability and durability of the paint examples from the 1st century AD are still extant. David balances the labour and patience demands of tempera with the relaxed and forgiving watercolour technique. The two media are so different that one offers perfect alternatives to the other – and yet all David's paintings are united by their vision and their subtle, layered composition. The long traditions of watercolour and tempera do not lessen the contemporary impact of David McKay's paintings. He applies a constantly developing eye to the ageless beauty to be found in New Brunswick. The vigour and drama of nature – silhouetted trees, loose grasses, hillsides, dynamic skies and calm waters – is balanced with studies of rural architecture. David paints what he likes to look at, and the manmade surfaces placed in nature have fascinated his eye for years. Recently the human figure has returned to his paintings and with it a narrative has been introduced to the calm images. The textures David paints into his environment, whether a weathered barn's clapboards, a rolling cloudy sky, or the brick of a chimney, are the marks of a high level of sensitivity and perception. The stillness of solitude found in the country defines Mckay's oeuvre. The trees, skies and reflections, the barns, smoke and figures all distill New Brunswick into colourful and introspective paintings. David McKay has had numerous solo exhibitions and has taken part in some very prestigious group exhibitions – including one with the National Gallery. David was the subject of a Bravo documentary and his art represented Canada at the Montreal Olympics, at the Centre de Culture in Paris and a painting was commissioned and reproduced for an edition of the phone book. David's paintings are featured in the significant private collections of New Brunswick and he has a painting in the collection of HRH Prince Andrew.
A FEW WORDS WITH DAVID MCKAY, BY NIKKI THERIAULT
The Telegraph Journal's Salon section featured an interview with David on August 1, 2009, please click on the link to read the article: |
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