Arthur Fortescue McKay
(1926–)
(–2000)
Arthur Fortescue McKay
1926–2000
Arthur Fortescue McKay (1926–2000), commonly known as Art McKay, was a painter from Saskatchewan and a member of the Regina Five, the group responsible for bringing abstract expressionism to Regina, which at the time was an isolated prairie city. He is best known for his contemplative scraped enamel mandala paintings.
McKay studied at the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art in Calgary from 1946 to 1948, at the Académie de la grande chaumière in Paris from 1949 to 1950, and later at Columbia University in New York and the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania, from 1956 to 1957. Beginning in 1950, he taught at the School of Art, Regina Campus (now the University of Regina), until his retirement in 1987. During this time, he helped initiate the Emma Lake artist workshops, a program which organized retreats for prestigious artists in rural Saskatchewan to work and share their artistic practice. It was during one of these retreats that McKay was deeply influenced by Barnett Newman.
From an early age, McKay was drawing landscapes. In 1958, however, he began creating his non-objective paintings. These works were focused on creating paintings that were things in themselves rather than representative of referential images. This led to his mandalas, a geometric configuration of symbols arranged in circular, rectangular, or square shapes, inspired by his interest in Zen Buddhism. Their mesmerising structure represents the connectedness of the universe within the human mind and body, and it is meant to illicit a response between the viewer and their environment. In the 1970s, McKay introduced landscapes back into his work.
McKay’s paintings have been exhibited across Canada and the United States. His work is also held in significant museum collections, such as the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa among others. In 1961, McKay, along with the other members of the Regina Five, displayed their work at the National Gallery of Canada in an exhibition titled Five Painters from Regina. In 1964, McKay attained international recognition for his work when he was one of three Canadian painters to be including in Clement Greenburg’s exhibition Post-Painterly Abstraction in Los Angeles.