Gordon McKenna Studio

Clouds, Second hand and the Antiques shop. CLOUDS Its a stunning landscape! the expanse of it, the giant sky and vast fields and mountains scattered with vegetation clinging to life, barely green. Yellows, browns reds and orange against a vast blue sky. Staring out the window of a moving car the fresh wind in my face. 8 maybe 9 years old we were racing home towards the village in the middle of nowhere, our home of old houses snuggled in a canopy of trees. We reached the hill and saw a van parked up on the side of the road, a body to the rear of it. we stopped to see if they needed any help. You do that kind of thing in the countryside. Me and my father, we walked over from the car. An old man lying rigid like he had fallen from a coffin, dead, arms straight by his side on the ground, black as ash and not a mark on him. The farmer stood over him with his man, rifle by his side. The van was packed with middle aged men all black clinging to the sides of the van sitting uncomfortably on it...

  1976/78 Sherbet. I don't remember exactly how the sherbet factory came about. I don't think I could read properly when I was seven so I must have heard somebody mention that if you mixed bicarbonate of soda with icing sugar you got sherbet. I remember being genuinely confused about why everybody wasn't making their fortunes out of selling sherbet when it was clearly the easiest and most delicious thing in the world to do. I'm not sure how I persuaded my teachers to let me do it but I  clearly remember setting up a little table at the sports day selling little bags of white powder to my fellow pupils. I guess they thought it would be wrong to stop my naturally entrepreneurial spirit. I never sold any even at only 2 cents a bag. Probably just as well as at some point during the course of the day it occurred to me that I was not completely sure that you made sherbet by mixing bicarbonate of soda with icing sugar and I might be about to poison somebody. I packed up and we...

  1971/72 - The trees. I have tried to write this story several times but have never managed to convey the sadness and horror of it fully. I could not write and share it before my father died and maybe I still should not share it. It is the story of my earliest memories. We were living in a small village called Hilldrop in South Africa. I think Rudyard Kipling lived there once but don’t quote me on that. I cant find it on any maps and maybe it no longer exists. Just a fairytale place in my youngest memories. It was beautiful, spacious and sunny and everywhere there were massive old, ancient trees. I remember the drive up to the village. All six of us in the yellow station wagon bouncing along the dusty road. The steep pink banks higher than the car and on top of them the trees, so tall their tops touched the pure blue sky. Me standing on the back seat my head out the window and my face in the wind. Pure joy. I cant have been more than 3 years old. My sister was still a toddler and ...