“Our true sanctuary lays in the light in silence. Truthfulness lives in the ethereal oneness into which neither menacing worries nor crashing worlds can intrude.” – McKay

Wanting the viewer to have the feeling of entering not an artwork but a sanctum filled with ethereal light. McKay believes in the invisible, underlying reflections inherent in light like color. His work is abstract, drawn in part from the ordered universe and leaving no recognizable imagery - figures, landscapes, the material world behind. Transparent-lucent acrylic canvas is his signature material, and painting and sculpture are his preferred gestures.

He is as confident of his mastery of reflecting light to produce ethereal colors as he is in his artistic vision and his ability to see the possibilities within light and beyond. He thinks of ways to work with the powerful forces waiting in the light to be reflected. But the other side of this is the powerful ability to read the possibility inherent in the light, and it’s his intuitive sense to look at a material object and know that there is an artwork there ready to be transformed and transcend itself in his almost ephemeral state of mind necessary for achieving the unthinkable. A mysterious inner life glows from McKay’s creations that exhibit dual natures. On the one hand, they exude a sense of stillness, exemplified by the receptivity of the transparent-lucent acrylic canvas to inventions born by reflecting light. References to a vastness with nothing and everything - suggest a state of oneness coexistence between humans and the universal. But there are other currents: the outside is covered in rubbed graphite, creating a blur, a myopia homage. This graphite surface has a subtle tension that’s held within the geometry of each piece. This tension is magnified by the elemental qualities of the graphite. Because of the way this material is smudged, these works have an opaque picture plane where you cannot see into the depths of the surface. In some ways, the physical material of graphite tries to keep us out, while the translucent surfaces invite us in. This darkness in his work is not the murk of evil but rather another veil of mystery that shrouds the complexities of the material world. This intermingling of dark and light, literally in the different reflections of the vastness of the transparent-lucent canvas and the dark blurred graphite surfaces, are central to this work. It suggests a fluid hybrid sensibility in which opposites coexist without losing anything of their distinctive natures. Meaning comes when we connect the seen with the unseen.

Perpetual Light | Unconscious Equilibrium | Ever OK Ever

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