PHOTO ESSAY
That '60s Show
The National Gallery embraces the flower power decade
By Liz Hodgson
 Blue Image by Art McKay. Courtesy National Gallery of Canada. |
Art McKay (1926-2000)
Blue Image
1966
Oil on masonite
Leclerc chose Art McKay’s vibrant Blue Image for the same reason she included Morriseau’s Copper Thunderbird. Both works, according to Leclerc, “take their inspiration from something ancient. With Morriseau, it’s native legend of the Pacific Northwest. In the case of Blue Image, the feel is esoteric Orientalism.” McKay was a member of the Regina Five, a group of painters who made a huge splash with a 1961 National Gallery exhibition. The group, which also included Ron Bloore, Ted Godwin, Kenneth Lochhead and Douglas Morton, would hold now-legendary retreats in the woods surrounding Saskatchewan’s Emma Lake. What’s interesting here are the materials McKay used. “What he’s done is applied stovepipe enamel over the vibrant blue and then scraped it back,” says Leclerc. This, she says, “is a subtractive rather than additive process. Paint is removed rather than added — a relatively new method of painting at the time.”
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