Gordon McKenna Studio

  I discovered that I could do a single course in Fine art in my second year of my Social Science degree so of course I enrolled on this. I did Drawing 1 in 1989, this thing that changed the whole way I saw the world! I’ve never been so excited by anything, any kind of learning in my whole life. It was exhilarating! Life drawing changed my life and the way I looked at things. I realised I had gained some sort of power over the way I could interpret what I saw. I wasn't just the liberation of realising that I could put to paper the person in front of me but that I could capture something of their character their physicality, their humanity. Form, volume,  contrapposto,  these are academic, formal terms but once you understand them you can suddenly do something with a pencil, a piece of charcoal that you could never have imagined possible before. Form Understanding how the limbs attach to the body, the hands and feet to the limbs, the angle of the neck and head in relation ...

  1988/89 - Red red wine and weed. My father wanted me to do a Social science degree majoring in Business administration. I had to agree to this or go to the army. In 1991 subscription in South Africa for white men was 2 years in military service. There is no way I could have survived this. It wasn’t just that I was a bit fem, a bit delicate, it was mostly that I couldn’t stand to be told what to do and had regularly rallied against authority figures throughout my life, especially my father (poor man). I had decided many years before this that I wanted to be an artist but needs must so off to University to do social science I went in 1988. UB40 weren't allowed to play live in South Africa because of Equity restrictions placed on artists due to ongoing Apartheid. Me, just turned 20, and most under twenty something's decamped to Botswana for a day to see them play. I went mostly to hear this song "Red red wine" played live. Quite the adventure. I just heard a tune by th...

  It's odd how you forget an event in your life completely and then suddenly out of the blue the memory of it comes flooding back for no apparent reason. 1995 Ice cream man. I can't think of a single reason why I'd suddenly start to recall my days as an ice cream seller in Pine Town in South Africa. I can't have been more than 17 years old so more than 30 years ago. I was still at school and looking for summer work, oddly my father didn't have work for me that year like he had done since I was about 14. It only took about an hour for the manager to show me the ropes, how to use the till, make waffles, scoop ice cream and cash up at the end of the night. He was a bit worried I was a bit young but then I had the confidence of youth and had already achieved my full height of 6 foot. So there I was on my own in the ice cream bar crapping myself while waiting for my first customer, and wait I did! I was doing a Saturday night for about 6 hours but it was completely dead....

  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 ...