SCOTT A. MCKINLEY

Location Reveries

The Location Reveries are colorful abstract notations made in charcoal, acrylic paint, ink and oil pastel on heavy art papers. The simple drawing and heavy color give visual form to my memories of the St. Francis Street neighborhood in Tallahassee, Florida where I lived five decades ago. Every house had concrete or brick steps leading up from the street onto a walkway through a swept clay yard to a front porch where everyone met to tell stories. Except for memories, and these paintings, none of the lovely character of the place remains. These intimate works capture something of the spirit of that neighborhood.

Florida Levee, Works on Paper

The movement of dark water and the architecture of the locks and levees around Florida's Lake Okeechobee inspired my FLORIDA LEVEE paintings. These small abstractions in paint, ink and oil pastel on heavy art paper capture my experiences at the waterside. The paintings are made from memory back in the studio after hours of walking, exploring and drawing at the lock sites. 
I paint them intuitively and trust the suggestive tensions between stable, interlocked architectural forms and the fluidity of the water to reveal deeper thematic content.

The Epoxies

The Epoxies begin as traditional paintings, drawings or collages. Individual works are first coated with epoxy on the face side. When that cures, the reverse side is coated with epoxy and a bridging framework is embedded. Upon curing the image and its support are a single, self-supporting unit.

Close Reach, Paintings on Canvas

To be on a CLOSE REACH means you're moving at a slant to the prevailing wind. This imagery and metaphor comes from my experience sailing offshore in the Atlantic or coasting along Florida's south-eastern coast.

Collectors have described these small, colorful and textured paintings as enigmatic and joyful. My paintings playfully employ simplified depictions of well-know seaside forms in vertical compositions. The multiple surface tensions and textures, controlled and exaggerated color, and the simplified drawing of shapes and spaces are all the means to embody the the immediate and primitive structure of the real.

 Behind all of this work is always the intuition that my experience has a significance that transcends its immediate importance for me personally. I offer these paintings as metaphors for the deep content we all share, 

Close Reach - Works on Paper

I make many simple diagrammatic works on paper with ink, watercolor, crayon, pencil and acrylic paint. These intuitive and intimate images record my initial explorations of important thematic content, which I develop into models and larger paintings, These images serve as guides or probes into content which can be approached but not grasped.