"The essence of art is the courage to reach into darkness and bring forth something not seen before, and to know that if done with a devotion that transcends the personal ego. this unique expression is of the highest value."

Alan McKee is a self-taught artist whose early life was influenced by
his mother who was a scholarship student of Hans Hofmann in the 1950's
and 60's and the last to exhibit at Peggy Guggenheim's in New York. His
early life was influenced by personal friends of the family such as May
and Harold Rosenberg, Bill and Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner and
Jackson Pollock, Harry Jackson and Ailas Spinden, sister of Osamu
Nogouchi.

Working in the corporate world of design for over two decades with
such international names such as Ogilvy & Mather Direct, JWT Direct,
Wunderman International, Hume Publishing, General Motors AOL- Time
Warner, and Financial Trust.

Presently Alan has turned to his earlier passion of art into digital
art form with his launch of Spirit, Nature & Technology.
His work is printed on a Cymbolic Sciences Lightjet, a device which
uses lasers and a silver based process whose longevity is better than a
Cibachrome print.

Solo Exhibits
April 2007
Galerie D'este. 1329 Avenue Greene, Westmount, QC
May 2007
Gallery IX, 11 Davies Avenue, Toronto

Represented by ACA Gallery

Alan Mckee’s work, which combines digitized photography and advanced
techniques of image manipulation using the computer with a strong
mystical feeling for nature belongs to a distinguished tradition that
now stretches back for more than 150 years.

One can imagine these images serving as maquettes for scenes in
Mozart’s Magic Flute, or for Klingsor’s garden in Wagner’s Parsifal.
This suggests that the spectator’s relationship with them is not
static, but shifting and dynamic. It also suggests that there will be,
for many people who look at them, a synaesthetic element, that is, they
are quite likely to suggest sounds, as part of the total experience.
This is a factor that helps to strengthen the link between McKee’s work
and the tradition to which I have already referred.”

Edward Lucie-Smith
former chief art reviewer for The Times of London and art critic

My earliest memories are always intermixed with conversations about
painting. My mother’s friends, mostly students of Hans Hofmann, talked
about little else. Their obsession with space and colour was the air I
breathed.

“It’s good, but the edges are not resolved.”
“If you don’t get that corner right, the whole thing will be too flat.”
“You need more red in that area if you want tension in the diagonal.”

By the time I was six I could and did talk about paintings in the same
way. On one notable occasion, I delivered my opinions about a canvas to
a friendly middle-aged man who listened and asked questions
attentively. It meant nothing to me that he was Clement Greenberg. I
was simply doing what my mother and her friends always did, at shows or
in their studios. The other regular occurance of my childhood were
walks in the woods with my mother, who pointed out the unique beauty
inherent in each natural thing.

Then, through a complex and disasterous childhood, I lost track of the
golden thread of my essence: my love of visual relationships. It was to
remain lost to me for many years. But, in the early eighties I had a
dream about an extraordinary device, a small thing made of wire and
glowing stones. It allowed me to manipulate the stones into colours and
patterns of infinite beauty and variety. Using it was an act of pure
creation. I woke from this dream feeling more joyful than I ever had in
my life. I still, however, didn’t know what to do about this powerful
dream. I had no thought of creating art myself until I encountered an
image that changed my life. It was a face, painted in simple black
brush strokes on the side of a little building in the alley where I
lived. This face became my image of a feminine god, an Anima image, if
you are inclined toward Jung. I wrote a short story about it called,
“Radiance.” The story “explained” how this transcendent image came to
exist in my little alley.

For fear of losing this image, I began to photograph it. I had never
used a camera at that time and bought a Nikon FE. Then I spent hours of
every day, in every quality of light capturing this face. I blew it up
to four by three feet and have it still in my home. A short time later
I got a computer and one of the earliest versions of Photoshop. After
many thousands of hours, and after rediscovering many of the lessons I
had once learned about painting, I began to do my own work, work that
combines the fluidity of paint, the rigidity of geometry, the spirit of
nature and the spiritual intimations I received from the image in the
alleyway and from the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

--Alan McKee