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Ian McKeever talks about painting - The Open College of the Arts

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Ian McKeever talks about painting thumb

Ian McKeever talks about painting

In choosing to make a painting you are choosing to use paint. That maybe a tautology but I just want to start with it as I want to emphasise the significance of that material. That choice, the significance of that material, immediately becomes part of your subject matter.
In following a degree in painting, students undertake to develop a deeper critical understanding of why they use paint and a deeper relationship to its properties.
One artist who speaks eloquently and accessibly about this relationship is Ian McKeever. His paintings are very beautiful to many people, but I think it is important to recognise that the basic premise of his methodology could be applied to a wide variety of outcomes.
Ian McKeever taught at the Slade and in fact he was a visiting lecturer at my own undergraduate art college where I had a memorably inspirational tutorial with him.
In the video below he gives a very generous and useful insight into his working life. It is a chance to have a tutorial with Ian McKeever really as it is so pedagogical in its timbre. Through his articulation of his own process we get a picture of someone very attune to the properties of paint and painting.
As I embark on writing a new course for the OCA about exploring drawing media I find myself returning to Ian McKeever and his intimate relationship to his paintings.


Posted by author: Emma Drye

13 thoughts on “Ian McKeever talks about painting

  • Thank you for this post and introduction to the video. It comes to me on a day when I have been grappling with the idea of “drawing with paint”. What is the process of drawing with paint and how is it different from painting with paint?
    This artist talks about his approach to, and reasons for painting, and it’s fascinating to listen to and consider. But, the question remains for me, what is drawing with paint?
    I’m interested that you are about to write about drawing, and you come back to this painter. My initial thoughts bring me to the notion that the act of drawing could be attempted with the same aims in mind. Does this mean that if one uses paint, it is painting and some other media makes a drawing?
    Round and round I go!

    • Don’t make yourself dizzy! This may be a cop out but maybe just think about making marks rather drawing or painting…

    • Me too Alison. The chapter headings for the course were given to me by the Programme Leader and his first heading is ‘Drawing with Fluid Media’. On the whole these categories are only useful if they are useful if you know what I mean. If thinking about your work in those terms is generative for you in whatever way then great – if it is limiting you for reasons that are not in themselves useful parameters to generate focussed thought or action then just move on. I am enjoying using the idea of drawing with fluid media to think about how drawing might be something specific about gesture or the moment when one’s body hits the paper, rather than anything about materials as such. Ian McKeever does a lot of drawing with fluid media too!

  • This is a wonderful tutorial. It’s interesting how he said he is not interested in figurative painting, but the metaphor for the painting is one person standing. Not the physical appearance, but the energy of being, the life force of the person.

  • Thank you for this – and I don’t think his words need just be confined to painting. They apply just as well to any medium. Photographers, for example – watch this, if you haven’t already done so. The message that (‘good’, dare I use that word!) art draws the viewer in, arouses interest and questions, then makes one stand back, with no answers, still questioning – to then come back again and see the work anew, raising fresh questions. I think we can all benefit from that train of thought.

    • There’s a radical thought Stan! Apart from his rather reductive perspective of today’s “youth” I agree that this ‘tutorial’ as Alison defines it, is pertinent to most, if not all students of the arts. And so I wonder when these articles are published their poster might consider the universality of many of their inherent messages.

      • It looks as if the tagging fairy has granted your wish jsumb. Although I am the author I am quite rightly not trusted with the workings of the site and just upload my article to be inserted into the blog with its intro and tags added by someone else. In general though I would hope that many curious minded students read articles tagged as being of special interest to other disciplines. Art College is so much about cross disciplinary conversations and of course the OCA creative arts pathway is specifically about that. The OCA blog site has a range of authors from both staff and students – for myself as a fine art blogger I sometimes write quite generally and at other times quite specifically for a course or medium so there should be a good range of approaches and ideas.

        • Excellent. I learned some time ago to ignore the tags and read the articles that invite me in. Of course I understand that tags are important signposts for all of us though.

  • Thanks for the McKeever video. It has certainly helped me as a writer and a viewer of visual art to understand what goes on in an abstract painting. Should be compulsory viewing for all those students doing Creative Arts Today. Although poetry is not abstract by comparison with McKeever’s paintings, his ideas about a painting finishing itself could apply to poetry too. As could a painting being something you go into and come out of as a continual process, as practitioner, viewer or reader. And I love the idea of the pictorial being an influence for the abstract but only an influence.

  • Thank you for posting this video Emma. I often dip into Ian McKeever’s book ‘In praise of painting’ and can relate to his relationship with the art form but this is the first time I have actually seen/heard him speak. It is inspiring and insightful – particularly when he talks about painting not having all the answers or giving too much away. I see it as very open ended and full of possibilities – the pushing and pulling he talks about in relation to the experience of the viewer is also very connected to the experience of making the work and that dialogue with the paint itself.

  • It is interesting to talk about ‘painting’ as well as ‘paint’ as they are two different things, although they hold hands. If one focuses solely on paint, the result can tend to become over precious. McKeever talks about painting (as verb and noun) as a living thing which can pull you in and push you out, has an energy and a time frame. He refers to art history, in particular, Duccio’s painting in Sienna, as inspiration, yet he very much differentiates between abstract and figurative. I wonder how old this video is because I don’t believe the distinction is useful. Duccio was well aware of abstract qualities, otherwise his paintings would have had no emotional impact.It is evident that McKeever uses figurative languages in his painting. I think it is a legacy from the Abstract Expressionists and associated critics and historians to separate the two. One could equally well say there are too many stripes in the world already (although that would be equally erroneous). Enjoyed the video despite this- especially the bit about seeing the painting for the first time.

  • I like the idea of being pulled into a painting but also released from it. Engagement but also a degree of detachment or separation. His quest to give his painting an impression, a memory that lasts and goes beyond the physical is compelling. His approach of allowing different marks to remain including the bare canvas gives the work a feel of timelessness, which is relayed further by ensuring that his layers do not get too heavy and retain a degree of transparency. A very interesting video Thanks.

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