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Noel McKenna

Noel McKenna paints everyday subjects in a minimal and highly personal style. His work is characterised by a contemplative quality, and has at times carried an undertone of social comment. McKenna also makes tin sculptures,
which can be seen in this year's National Sculpture Prize and Exhibition (opening in April at the National Gallery of Australia). He is represented by Darren Knight Gallery in Sydney and Melbourne's Niagara Galleries.

Why do you make art?
I enjoy it.

Could you name an artist/some artists whose work has been important to you, and say why?
In Australia to begin with the early work of Albert Tucker and Sidney Nolan I have always admired. For the last few years I have been a big fan of Outsider Artists, the obsessive qualities of a lot of the work and just their reasons for doing the work which has I think an integrity, almost a spiritual quality.

How does your process of making a painting begin?
I am a collector of lots of things. I am often at my most productive when I spy council clean ups and I go through what people have discarded. I have found a lot of photographs that way and every now and then I do a painting of one that has a particular strangeness about it. My last show at Darren Knight's included a couple. Also I carry a camera around a lot and take snaps of the everyday.
I have boxes and boxes of stuff all labeled much in the same way Joseph Cornell had in his basement studio at 3708 Utopia Parkway, Flushing, New York. (Why do books on Cornell always put his address under photos of him?) Cornell is an artist I like a lot as well.

Your exhibitions tend to be thematic. Do you work with a theme in mind, or does it grow out of the work?
The themes just sometimes grow if something keeps you interested long enough.

Your paintings have a quality of slowness and quietness. Is it important to you to make a visual statement that is at odds with the prevailing speed and slickness of so much contemporary visual imagery?
It's interesting you say my paintings have a quality of slowness and quietness about them as I paint them quite quickly, usually always in one 'sitting'. Most of my works are small, around 40 x 50cm but I often start work with 3 or 4 ideas in my head and if one doesn't work out I go on to the next one.
There is, as has been said many times, an overload of contemporary images, but if you pick through it all there is always something interesting to see.

Do you think painting can be an effective means of social commentary?
It can be, depends on the artist, the problem is competing with TV for the audience.

Do you see your work relating to the traditions of painting? If so, how?
I became a painter because of looking at other paintings so you do hope to have some sort of place in history but I really do my work for myself and don't think about it much at all.

Could you tell us about your sculptures - what are they, and how did you come to make them?
My sculptures came about when I was doing paintings on tin about 14 years ago and with some offcuts I cut out shapes, usually people, trees, animals etc. and stood them up on boards in a diorama style.
I work on them when I need a break from painting.

Of peoples' responses to your work, which have you found most satisfying?
A tough question; an art critic in Adelaide once hated my work, said I used dull grey, green colours in simple compositions with all signs of life sucked out of them, cold, impersonal, naive, generally a waste of paint and canvas but I found that quite satisfying because I agreed with a lot of it.

The editors devise the questions asked in the Artist's Questionnaire. While certain standard questions are put to each artist, other questions are tailored to suit the individual. Furthermore, the artist is not obliged to answer every question. The intention of the Questionnaire is not to provide a comparative gauge of artists' responses, but to give as full an insight as possible into each artist's thoughts and motivations.