Ian McKeever and His Process

Temple Painting, 2005-06

In an interview in 2013 shot at Galleri Andersson/Sandström in Umeå, Sweden Ian McKeever talks about his process of painting.

He explains that he likes to look at the size of the painting first, maps it out, and once he’s contemplated this for a period he then orders the canvases and begins a series. These are rotated and swapped out as he changes and simply looks at work trying to understanding, painting for periods and then waiting in a state of contemplation. This early stage may well involve paper works or some smaller paintings.

“The painting is establishing its own time, rather than it being imposed.”

He produces large abstract paintings that show a series of layers, with an emphasis on space and form. He’s interested in a “loose amorphous space” that has no exactness but “pulses”. He explains that he is trying to create a feeling for each painting giving it an identity.

One of the systems that he uses is to pour the paint onto the large unprepared canvas surface and he then builds up the layers. He has a level of control but also wants a random element that this brings with it. He uses diluted acrylic paint that cannot be changed or altered and McKeever will destroy one that hasn’t gone as planned.

For McKeever the paintings that he believes works well are the ones which try to deal what it is to be human. He states that too many paintings are about the paint but that there should be more of the painter within the work. He says that he seeks the “The whole philosophy of self” when he paints and looks at other people’s work, that “you are actually trying to declare yourself as a human being and let it manifest it’s self through the form of painting.”

I find this an interesting approach to painting and one I want to try and incorporate into what I do, as yet I’m unsure if this is possible. My work takes form the fake, the artificial recording and the presence of light. Where in this do I exist?

Taking the Orange Landscapes to the Next Stage

As the experiment that was the flood plain series came to a semi-finished state I began to see other forms within the work. The strong shapes and colours as a whole were strongly competing in the whole space and I could see that there were potential abstract forms and landscapes that I could take further, smaller less combative groups of more abstract sections.

This was a process I did with the field paintings, where I reduced the plant filaments to the abstracted landscapes that I call the Defragmentation Paintings.

Picking out further landscapes in the orange flood plain series resulted in a process that is shown here in this book where I selected sections from the paintings and then zoom in and then rework these in a larger scale.

The size of these newly selected regions of the original paintings I feel is important. I’m currently working at making these larger still.

My Developing Practice

The process that I have been developing in my painting has largely come from one photograph. I had interpreted this photograph as a large painting. Some elements of this painting worked and others needed further development but overall it opened up a dialogue that allowed me to take the route I am now following in my research.

 

The relationship between the original printed photograph and the painting it became made me consider how to use light within my paintings. The aspect that worked was the high contrast zone through the middle of the picture, showing the plants ablaze with light and creating contorted shapes. These forms and patterns seem to move and float as if imbued with some kind of energy.

 
I began to sketch these individual forms, foliage of the plants, but not their original design more a manipulated retelling of something that was living. From the static viewpoint the painting created the shapes presented abstracted forms that seem to naturally connect and of course this is because in reality they do but with the high contrast light behind them they become something more, yet retain something of a natural gravity.

 
I began to question how I could interpret this light behind these organic forms by looking at its

impact upon the edge. But what I could see was a type of halo and that this almost magical presence created and a movement and dance. What I'm trying to say is these transparent edges were doing something exciting to these forms.

My sketches became paintings on board and these picked out some of the abstract forms from the master painting, or/and photograph, and then I began to add layers of white, some of them breaking the edge of these forms and in my own way manipulating these natural shapes with my own light.
 
But as I explored this process, the results of which I was very pleased with, I hit a level where if I was be on and say four or five layers of white the plant forms would almost be completely engulfed by this white light, or paint. So I naturally came to a stage when the painting in the sense was completed if I wanted to retain some of the original abstracted forms.

As an aside to this main research I have begun collecting other representations of this phenomena in life. I have been in a number of locations where I have seen similar glowing bodies set against very bright backgrounds. For example figures on a beach, up by the waves, the sun very bright in the background. These human forms have become manipulated by this extreme light. This could be another area of development for my practice, especially considering the paintings I've done already existed in the landscape.

Processing Light in my Paintings

I'm breaking up the elements of the photo, potentially isolating them. These elements consist of a number of grounds and the silhouetting effect of the foreground.

By doing so I exam the edge. This edge is created by making the elements their own entities. If the foreground is isolated how does it connect to the patches of light in the background.

This edge has become of interest. This is where the light in the selected photographs has created a glare effect that seems to show a hallow around the object. Many of these objects are living and appear as if on fire in a white hot spotlight.

I have been layering the thinner white paint, the bright over exposed light, on this range of shapes I have found in the source material photographs.

I see these as research for larger paintings that potentially will include other aspects of the landscape the origin of these forms.

These are done using oil paint.