Skip McKee paints his mood, relying on layer after layer of house paint and artist colors to capture the depth, transience and vibrancy of his daily interaction with the canvas. Capturing mood through color sets the stage for creating a space where the facial expressions and physical presence of his subjects interact with an ‘unreal reality’. His figures move in and out of space, spewing from it, melding with it, refusing to be confined by it. The space they inhabit is the space of the psyche. This phantasmagorical space comes from a long-time fascination with surrealism and artists like Salvador Dali, Francis Bacon and Glenn Brown.

‘I first started to get intrigued by painting when I saw a Dali exhibition at age 18, it was the weirdness of it, along with the imagination. I’ve always liked things where they are not spelled out for me, I think this stems from not really wanting to be confined in reality. I like entering and exiting reality in my head. It gives me the flexibility to elevate my thoughts,’ says McKee.

McKee’s latest work reflects the busyness of his own mind with confetti-like scatterings of color expanding his view that we all are part of an energy thread of life; neither superior nor powerful, but fragile, transient and linked with everything around us.