Love-Handles and Cowlicks

What does it look like to grow as an already well-established artist? During the process of creating the work for his show Love Handles and Cowlicks, Johnny McKee was forced to ask himself this very question. It started when a former art professor challenged him to go back to the basics of painting since he had become too comfortable in his art practice. Because he recently developed tendonitis in his right arm rendering it unusable till it healed, McKee did just that; laying out large sheets of brown paper and painting with his non-dominant arm. He focused on how different colors interact with each other and not on creating recognizable forms. This led to a body of work that emphasizes a balance between the goodness of creation and desire for expression with the ways we are limited in our humanity, and how that still creates beauty. 

It became about more than just fundamentals for McKee; in the process of getting back to the basics for this show, he was reminded of how creating art as a child is purely about having fun by doing something you love. Because he didn’t focus on painting forms in the process, he was able to see what came out naturally. The handles and little cowlicks and offshoots appear in many of the pieces which inspired the title of the show. It is a very intuitive and gracious way of painting as he lets the art inform him what it wants to be. This is evident as you take in all 156 paintings that Johnny completed for this (the most he has ever created for a single show!) and see all the bright colors and different shapes in each piece. 

He worked through different color combinations like the basic colors on the color wheel (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet), and created different interesting amalgamations of colors that you wouldn’t normally put together, like bright neon orange together with teal blue. The billboard piece for this show is another example, with splashes of orange, yellow and magenta that are overlaid in bold brushstrokes that blend beautifully together. The longer you look at each piece, the more you can feel the energy bouncing between the colors and brushstrokes.

This show emphasizes the human-ness of painting, where we can see beauty mixed in with imperfections. When talking to McKee about this, he quoted the Danish artist Asger Jorn: “Without ugliness there is no beauty, only obviousness, indifference, and boredom.” This show will inspire you to embrace your imperfections and to live life boldly and with as much color as possible.