Artwork description:

“The landscape assumes all the aspiration of the heart, it is the boundless field of poetic freedom, and a privileged crossroads of moods, it even ceases to be a type in order to become the sole necessity of a generation for which romanticism is neither a fashion nor an aesthetics but a gush from the depths of ones being, a constant exaltation of life and of the eye!” Henri Lemaître



Emptiness, isolation, separation, seclusion, space, opening, volume and quantity are all words that McKay uses to express the feeling of standing on a British beach, gazing across the sea as an inner city urban visitor.

He states the fact that during the mid-19th century the introduction of the railways brought people from British industrial cities to our seaside towns, now our airports take them away.

This on-going structured project to visit British seaside towns between 2011 and the present has produced a wealth of visual observational documentation. In the form of paint and print, his work aims to explore the increased emptiness and isolation during these rival times of overseas package holidays. The British coastal resort is for many presently simply only a day trip.

McKay’s objective is to observe the demise of an annual exodus of the population seeking a pleasurable experience, and produce a body of work using colour studies and text developed from existing location signage. Where else would we see signs reading Promenade, Kiss me Quick, Rock and Pier the unique language of the Seaside Town.

Materials used:

Screen prints inks on FABRIANO paper 285gsm