SCOTT A. MCKINLEY
PALMETTO BAY, FL
Scott McKinley is an independent artist living and working in Palmetto Bay, Florida. Collectors praise his work as "thoughtful" and "energized by joyful color".
Message
I’ve lived all but a few years of my life on a peninsula and have a keen sense of being surrounded by light. The Atlantic coastline, the Everglades and the Florida prairies ground my experience. Light, color, space, and the land forms I know are central to my art and the inspiring sources for my work.
A fourth generation Florida native, I was born in Melbourne, Florida. My earliest vivid memories are of open sky, cloud forms, and the rhythmic movement of the ocean against the coastline. Growing up on the southeast Florida coast, I was free to discover and wonder at the world, guided by desire or chance. I learned on my own the natural aspects of visual imagery; the interplay of light and color on form, and the qualities of rhythm and dynamic balance. The very things that restore harmony to life.
I have a B.F.A. degree in painting, a Masters degree in Sculpture, and an M.F.A. degree in Inter-media.
For four decades I developed art programs and taught art while simultaneously pursuing my own painting practice. In those years, I showed my paintings regularly in group exhibitions and sold work through gallery representation. My drawings and paintings are in private collections in Florida. Large paintings are also in the collection of the University of South Florida School of Medicine and in private medical practices in Florida.
I live with my extended family and work in Palmetto Bay, Florida.
Scott A. McKinley
Statement
My work is abstract, but refers to specific locations, events or memories, as the titles suggest. For any group of works, my essential process always involves a development of the right qualities of color, surface, light, gesture, shape and edge in order to discover an expressive and communicative form. I am quite attentive to the qualities of my materials and am open and intuitive in their use. I may apply color by soaking paint into the raw canvas or art paper, by spraying, or with painting knives, or with traditional brushes or with brushes I make myself. Often paintings begin as raw canvas on the floor or on a table. After the drawing and initial colors and shapes are applied and an image is beginning to make itself known, I stretch the canvas and proceed until I've discovered the completed form. I usually work on several paintings, large and small, at a time.
Drawing is a genuine and fundamental way of knowing. It remains the most direct way of discovering vital imagery and is integral to my artistic practice. I draw daily from observation and memory and make countless simple, diagrammatic drawings in studio books and on a variety of art papers with simple materials like ink, pencils, crayons or charcoal I make myself. Sometimes I paint or color over these. My drawings stand as works of art themselves, but often reveal new directions for my painting. Drawing discoveries are therefore both a gift and a challenge.
I make small painted sculptures with a variety of humble materials; cardboard, wood scrap, plaster and epoxy. The sculptures I am now making are essentially vertical stacks of recognizable, flat shapes like sailboats, ocean waves, cloud forms, the sun, concrete benches and beach shelters, all of which have evocative associations for me.These colored shapes are arranged on a vertical axis and attached. The sculptures are essentially frontal and so are presented either hanging on the wall or supported by a simple base. I often use the sculptures as models for the pictorial spaces in my paintings.