Resume

Kevin McKay is an urban landscape painter who holds a Masters Degree in Fine Art from the National Art School and exhibits at May Space Gallery, Sydney.

Accolades include The Basil & Muriel Hooper Scholarship from the AGNSW, 2006; the Sydney City of Villages Art Prize, 2009; the inaugural William Fletcher Foundation Scholarship to The British School at Rome, 2011; the Kogarah Emerging Artist Prize, 2012; the Waverley Oil Painting Prize, 2013; the Allan Gamble Memorial Prize, 2015; the People’s Choice Award, Waverley Art Prize, 2016, the People’s Choice Award, Greenway Art Prize, 2017; and Bayside Art Award, 2018.

McKay is on the board of Directors with the William Fletcher Foundation, and has taught at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Grammar School, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, Waverley Woollahra Art School and the National Art School.

Plein air studies inform Kevin’s studio paintings, which typically depict eerily empty architectural spaces, where the stillness of classical form and the drama of light is found in the everyday and in the midst of urban transience.

McKay’s work responds to place and involves repeated and sustained excursions into the environment. Plein air studies inform his studio paintings, which typically depict architectural spaces where formal geometric considerations are complimented by atmospheric light. The historical is often contrasted with the contemporary in eerily empty road-based compositions that juxtapose urban transience with classical form.

His classes cover the formal aspects of composition, perspective, modelling and mark-making in response to the built and natural environment with reference to historical and contemporary masters, and with an emphasis on utilising complimentary colours to create tonal harmony and provide the illusion of light.