McKown prefers to paint portraits and still lifes, but within these
simple modes he experiments with archetypal imagery and color
and space relationships, seeking to provoke a dialog with a viewer,
an emotional response like the one he experienced viewing Lefell.
“I do a lot of themed work—it’s not going to just be a rose or a skull,
and a lot of the female figure work I do has to do with depicting, say,
a maiden-mother-crone series, or archetypal imagery that exists
all around the world—we all have these same creational myths—
the same Earth Mother stories. But within that theme I still try to
have a dialog with the viewer—if you tell the entire tale, there’s no
dialog when you look at it, you know? I think a dialog is supremely
important, especially with figure work.”
From a commercial standpoint, McKown has been extremely
successful, selling just about every painting he’s done, barring
those given as gifts or kept for himself. He did celebrity portraits in
the beginning, from Depp to Bogart to Gandalf to Sulu, because he
thought they’d sell—and they did—but now he pretty much paints
what he wants. He’d like painting to be his mainstay, and he plans
on owning and operating a working art gallery someday—but would
he ever give up tattooing?
“No. I even tell younger tattooers, the money potential here is
great—so don’t give that up unless you have to—but there’s a social
element that can’t exist if it’s just you in your studio. In here, the
tattoo artists, we’re all great friends, and I can interact with different
people all day long—I can have a three-hour conversation with
a complete stranger, and that’s really valuable, insofar as being
human, you know what I mean? You need it. Humans exploring
ideas.”
And then tattooing them on someone. Or painting them on a canvas.
McKown does both. To brilliant effect.
INKSPIREDMAGAZINE.COM
21