Noel McKenna: It is Ordinary to Love the Sublime, But Sublime to Love the Ordinary

Noel McKenna has a unique instinct for capturing often unobserved and underappreciated moments of the everyday with endearing clarity. His spare canvases hint at narratives beyond the picture plane, often movingly depicting the relationship between humans and animals. With an extensive career spanning over forty years, McKenna has exhibited his work locally and internationally. This year at Melbourne Art Fair, Niagara Galleries (Naarm/Melbourne) presents a solo presentation of works by the artist.

Speaking with Melbourne Art Fair, McKenna provides insight about his animal subjects and what we should expect from his presentation.

 

Your work often depicts elements of the mundane, leaving much to be said about the lives of the subjects depicted, as if a snapshot in a story. What is it about the seemingly unextraordinary that sparks your interest?

My attitude to the humbleness of the everyday world, I would best sum up by saying it is ordinary to love the sublime, but sublime to love the ordinary.

Noel McKenna, The two faces of January, 2024, oil on canvas, 46 x 37cm. Photo: Simon Hewson. Courtesy the artist and Niagara Galleries (Naarm/Melbourne).

Animals, particularly dogs, cats and horses, are often the focal subjects within your works, even when a human subject is present. Would it be appropriate to consider your own pets as your muses? Why is it that animals seem to gauge your interest more than their human counterparts?

My own pets I have used as subjects but for the most part, the subjects I use to begin a painting more than often comes from a photograph I have taken, from books, Instagram, many different sources. I have a genuine fondness for most animals believing they have a complexity that a lot of people do not notice. When you look into the eyes of most animals be it a horse, cat or dog one sees the soulful nature of them often.

Is it your hope to capture an animal’s likeness, demeanour or personality through your paintings? Or are they more concerned by an overall sense of a scene or story at hand?

I do not try to capture the likeness of an animal when I am painting. I try to make an important part of the narrative of the work their relationship to other things, people, in the picture.

What is your process when creating a new composition? Does each work start with an idea, image, or story? Can you describe a moment when a scene has caught your eye, enough to inspire a piece?

My paintings generally begin by putting one thing on the canvas: could be a chair, tree and I then may just paint something beside the chair: could be a lamp, animal. It goes through many changes when I may wipe out the lamp, the composition usually comes out of moving things around to find an interesting use of negative space between things. More instinct than strategy or planning, I enjoy being surprised when I am working on a painting.

Noel McKenna, Edith’s Diary, 2024, oil on canvas, 100 x 100cm. Photo: Simon Hewson. Courtesy the artist and Niagara Galleries (Naarm/Melbourne).

What influenced your transition from studying architecture to fine art? How has your practice evolved throughout your career?

I left architecture because the lecturers at Queensland University when I was there told me I would have trouble graduating as an architect. One of them advised me to go to art school, which I had not thought of at all. I came from a working class family of Irish heritage where art had no real place.

Can you tell us about what we can expect to see from your solo show at Melbourne Art Fair with Niagara Galleries?

The works I will be showing at Melbourne Art fair continue my exploration of the relationship between humans and animals.

There is in the works a sense of apprehension in some of the compositions. I have been reading Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith, by Andrew Wilson, the biography of the American suspense writer best known for Strangers on a train and the Ripley books. She was tortured, difficult, quirky and deviant. I have read many biographies of artists but I was very affected by this book. Drawn from her diaries from when she was very young, a psychological portrait of someone when you read from her childhood to dying one feels you almost know them.

Totally devoted to her craft, always striving for her best, her personal life suffered as a result. I reached times in reading things she had done and said that I had to stop reading as it was upsetting me.

 

Visit Niagara Galleries, Booth E3, at Melbourne Art Fair, returning 20 -23 February. Click here to secure tickets.

Portrait Photo: Antony Clare. Courtesy the artist and Niagara Galleries (Naarm/Melbourne).