Noel McKenna

Noel McKenna works in a variety of mediums including oil, enamel and watercolor, lithography, etching, ceramic and metal. He produces offbeat depictions of everyday scenes, often incorporating displaced objects, people and animals. His sparse canvases hint at narratives beyond the picture plane, often depicting the relationship between humans and animals.

McKenna won the 2015 Tattersall’s Club Landscape Art Prize and was a finalist in the 2015 and 2014 Sir John Sulman Prizes, as well as being a finalist in the 2014 Wynne Prize. The artist won the Sir John Sulman Prize in 1994 and has been awarded the Trustees Watercolor Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales five times since 1997. He has also won the Melbourne Savage Club Prize for Painting and the Mosman Prize. McKenna will be exhibiting at Art Basel, Miami with Motherstankstation in 2015.

Born in Brisbane, Queensland in 1956, McKenna studied architecture at Queensland University in 1974 and 1975. He continued his education at Brisbane College of Art from 1976 to 1978 and then at Alexander Mackie College, Sydney in 1981. Since then, he has exhibited extensively in Australia and overseas, holding solo exhibitions in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide and Hobart, as well as Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Ireland and New Zealand. His work is held in all major state and regional galleries, and important public and corporate collections throughout Australia and overseas. McKenna currently lives and works in Sydney.