About McKown

Richard’s painting is about taking the richness of all the visual information that’s available in front of you and compressing it into a painting. Trying to synthesize the human expression of classical art with the directness of ideas in abstract color-field painting.  For him, painting is a collaborative process with the model, someone willing to show up and sit still, and wear the same clothes again and again, and see the painting come together and fall apart, have the pose change, and be willing to do this for three or four months, to be a model one must really want to see the painting be made. This work is about weaving the figure into the two dimensional surface of the painting, about the collection of experience with the model over time, and trying to find the painting language to express the emotional complexity of this experience.