James MacKeown
"I always seek calm"
One can only feel reassured by this painting and the way it plunges us into the heart of time. Distinguishing himself by the softness and clarity of his palette, James Mackeown has no equal when it comes to singing the Normandy shores, the green undergrowth and the simple joys of a well-protected family life.
Painting is for James Mackeown a continual source of peace, each of his gestures seems inspired by a delicious art of living; this capacity to savor the moment as if it contained a piece of eternity!
He never seems affected by the rumor and turpitudes of the world. He therefore has no need to raise his voice to give us irrefutable proof of his talent. The aptitude for happiness is written in the subtle nuances of his palette and this very personal way of caressing each subject.
Admire the accuracy with which he speaks of femininity and childhood, this period all the more touching as he confronts it with the infinity of the sky and the shores of sand or pebbles.
James Mackeown's painting is a song of celebration. It needs no words to express the quintessence of feelings and the intimacy of a home.
It is pure adherence to beauty, to the volatile fragility of each day, which so many of us have the gift of letting slip with regret. Attaching himself to the most delicate variations of light, James Mackeown does not disdain the rain whose trickling accompanies the fleeting reflections of passers-by.
It exalts the slightest nuances of the very capricious Norman sky, capturing the effects of mist like the opalescence of summer days when light and breeze combine to impregnate the landscape with an unparalleled fragrance.
Louis PORQUET Normandy posters.
James MacKeown
The painter of the intimate exhibits himself
An Irish artist who settled in Brittany after having lived in Normandy for over 25 years, James MacKeown paints the present moment with gentleness. The same feeling of gentleness emanates from James MacKeown as in his paintings.
The man is discreet, kind and warm. James MacKeown grew up between Ireland, Turkey and Wales in an artistic environment and discovered painting very early in the studio of his maternal grandfather, Tom Carr, a renowned Irish watercolourist based in Belfast.
Self-taught, he began exhibiting his works at the age of 15.
"I was accepted into the Beaux-Arts, but the director himself told me it was useless," the artist says with a laugh. From these first works, James MacKeown sets up the universe that will be his throughout his career.
“I have always been drawn to the intimate element. In a café, I look at the people sitting at the tables around me. I observe the way they interact with each other.”
His family is one of James MacKeown's main sources of inspiration, immortalizing tender and poetic moments: children on a beach in spring, lovers in a snowy park, a woman picking a red rose...
“These are things we have all experienced and that are important in life. Everyone has memories of playing in the sandbox or days at the beach.
A French politician bought one of my paintings and he told me that every evening when he came home, before doing anything, he would sit in front of it and remain alone for a moment contemplating it to de-stress.
The canvases owe their calming power to the artist's exceptional mastery of light and the symphonies of colours he creates. (…) Every day, James MacKeown reaches his studio by 6:30 a.m. at the latest.
"I go to bed late, I wake up around 3am and I read for a while. I get up between 5am and 5:30am. I've always slept very little, I remember when I was a child, I waited for my parents to get up."
In peace and quiet – “until 10 o’clock because after that I’m constantly disturbed” – James MacKeown paints with soft touches canvases whose subject he sometimes carries within him for years.
"I see something, but then I sometimes have to wait two years before making my first sketches. But then I can make about ten paintings around the subject."
Odile Habel The Genevans
James MacKeown
Nature in a setting
James MacKeown discovered painting at a very early age, in the studio of his maternal grandfather, Tom Carr, a great Irish watercolourist based in Belfast. He passed on to him a taste for drawing and a sense of colour.
Painting and drawing quickly became as essential to James as drinking and eating.
At fourteen, he took part in his first exhibition. At fifteen, he won first prize for portraiture in London.
Today, his paintings are exhibited in Paris, New York, Geneva, London, Cardiff, Nantes, Rouen, Le Havre... The originality of James' painting is that it has not been influenced by any fashion or school.
A complete self-taught artist, he has always remained outside the contemporary artistic circuits. What he paints is what he sees and above all what he loves: his family in his living space. We find the same feelings each time: simplicity, sincerity, intimacy. Nature, like a protective setting, has pride of place. Peace wins us over, the tranquility of his paintings leads us, too, to contemplation.
Alice Hulot, Armor Press
James MacKeown
Painting as a source of peace and the ability to be happy
Irish by birth, James MacKeown is a modest and silent artist. His models are always painted in an activity that concentrates them: reading, writing a letter, a puzzle in progress. The wait whispers a secret to us.
MacKeown transmits it to us through a simple, sensitive vision, that of a pictorial dazzle nourished by the rich substances of color.
His palette matches ranges of blues, greens, grays and ochres to the lights of the Alabaster Coast in which his subjects bathe or reign the dreamy atmosphere suggesting the evidence of happiness. Time passes, but seems to have no hold on these little nothings of daily life that give it all its truth.
Lydia Harambourg
James MacKeown
I could never live far from the sea
With this nude at the window under the brush of James Mackeown, the small things of everyday life that seem so banal are in reality great things punctuating our time. This is probably the main subject of all James Mackeown's paintings: small slices of the everyday.
This work is dedicated to his perception of the intimacy of the kitchen. He had painted these images with many memories in a real game with dreams.
This little book concerns the last work of James Mackeown exhibited in Deauville. The illustrations are accompanied by the artist's poems.
James Mackeown is an Irish painter who loves France so much that he set up his studio in Paimpol to better paint the shores of the Breton coast. He has lived in France since 1988.
In a charming collection that includes many titles.
Bound with headband. Format 17 x 22 cm. 124 p.
Allain Vollerin, The Arts Blog
