Andrew James McKay is a graduate of the honours arts programme at Emily Carr University of Art+Design. In 2019, he became the first student in the history of that institution to be awarded upon graduation the Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Inclusion, Democracy and Reconciliation. A three-time recipient of grant support from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, his work has been exhibited with Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York; Monte Vista Projects, Los Angeles; Ground Floor Art Centre, Vancouver; Peter Ohler’s Fine Art, Toronto; and Masters Gallery, Calgary.
“Not making near enough money to live by just selling paintings, I keep a job at a shop on Main Street in Vancouver. There are on this particular block, a lot of artists in the same position. One day, scouring the internet for early (c. 2005) Tim Gardner watercolours, I came across a show he’d done in the spring of that year with 303 Gallery in NYC. Finding what I was after, I wanted to see what more I could get my eyes on and reviewed other programming up that year at the gallery.
“Following Gardner’s show—during a summer hotter than what was usual—a three-person show, titled Passport to Painting, went on exhibition and featured paintings by Rodney Graham, Shannon Oksanen, and Derek Root. The former two, I knew, once ran Liberty, a coffee shop at the end of the block I was on—and I was piqued to see one of Shannon’s paintings was titled, “Kildare.” Was it the same Kildare who ran a clothing store between the cafe and the store I worked in? On a lunch break, I felt nosy and went in to pester who I almost certainly felt was the sitter.
“To my surprise and his, Kildare seemed to not even be aware of the painting’s existence! A mystery persisted until Patrik Andersson, a mutual acquaintance, reminded Kildare of the circumstances regarding the picture. The portrait was retrieved from storage (we’d all kind of hoped it was in some extraordinary collection, but as is the case with a lot of paintings, it had been secreted away in the interim), and installed in Kildare’s shop, Eugene Choo.
“Taking notes from Shannon’s Kildare, I subsequently made my own portrait of Kildare, he behind the desk of that same shop, and so recording the passing of twenty years’ time.”
