Our fine art class had visited the Mima art gallery in Middlesborough, and at the time the main exhibition was that of Stephen McKenna, renowned as a London born post modernist figurative artist. Once entering the gallery you notice the all walls covered in large paintings of both urban and rural landscapes. When moving in to other rooms you see some of his earlier work including pencil drawings of both people and figures.
In my opinion I felt that his paintings were painted extremely well, and did achieve an amazing grasp of perspective especially with the changing shades of buildings throughout distance in his work, but unfortunately because of the pale colours used it made the landscapes look more like a child's toy city and made the image look both flat and lifeless, in particular his urban landscape due to the monotone pastel colours used.
His pencil drawings and sketches I found to be better, grasping a lot of emotion within his mark making, I believe that his art work of people was better than his animals however as he captured emotions better within their faces. Whereas with the animals he just managed to grasp their basic image and motion. Perhaps if he focused more on their facial expressions and worked in a lot of powerful mark making to define their features it would give it an extra kick.
In conclusion, I believe that Stephen McKenna is a great artist, having the skill in both painting and perspectives and the talent of a great art, but his work lacks a certain amount of depth to making his images more life like and powerful with emotion and spirit.
Stephen McKenna certainly is a great artist, and that 'flat and lifeless' look, or lack of depth, is absolutely deliberate. You seem to miss the references, wit, irony and humour in his work, and a great deal more besides.
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