Richard McKinley paints beautiful landscapes in pastel. A journey through his paintings makes one dissolve into finite artistic elements of his canvas. Just a single note about his works-“Pacific Northwest Landscape” at its best! The appealing greens with shimmering violets and blues adds an impressionistic touch to his pastel paintings.
He was born in Oregon and spent his life in the beautiful valleys of Medford. According to him, his living place is a rural environment which is free from the influences of city life. His mother was an art hobbyist who encouraged his talent. So he was lucky enough to grow up in an artistic background. His first art lessons started with Jim Snook during high school. He was a western painter, cartoonist and illustrator. He gave aesthetic touch to his thoughts. Snook taught them about the works of great contemporary artists like Albert Handell and Richard Schmid. Richard became more obsessed to art with his influence.He soon became more prominent in art and started teaching portrait lessons to students.
He decided to take art more seriously and applied to college to study commercial art. But he was rejected stating that he was already a fine artist! Now he is a professional artist for more than 38 years. He loves to paint with both oil and pastels. Both have its own merits. Compared to oils pastel takes more time to dry.
Richard McKinley Pastel Paintings
Richard McKinley Pastel Set
Richard always uses a large collection of SCHMINCKE. Sometimes he also prefer working with TERRY LUDWIG PASTELS, SENNELIER, and GREAT AMERICAN. These are very soft pastels and helps in his technique. He uses GIRAULT for hard pastels.
Pastel Paper
Richard uses WALLIS Paper. He prefer the white museum grade Wallis Paper along with the Belgium mist professional grade, cut to size.
He also uses watercolor medium as an under-painting for some pastel works. Apart from pastel, he also works with oil. He conducts workshops for students across the country.
Almost 70% of his works are done en plein air. He finds that outdoor painting process is very demanding. It is packed with lot of effort and tight time frames. But in the studio, he is more experimental. He visualize a ghost effect in nature always. His palette often shows 3 colors-blue, gray and green. His pastel painting technique is more related to transparency. To achieve this unique look, he applies pastel layer by layer. Each such painting is a signature of nature!
