Steve McCann: Paintings and Drawings

Steve McCann: " I paint because it excites me."

“I don’t know how you do it” said Leon Kossoff in a letter to Hackney artist Steve McCann. This retrospective of McCann’s paintings and drawings gives us a glimpse of that precious ‘it’ to which Kossoff referred.

McCann’s urban landscapes and intense portrait studies made with densely sculpted paint capture each subject’s underlying gravity, rendering his work strangely compelling.

McCann, modest in manner, dismisses any magic, mystery or myth of his own artistic gift. “I just happen to be a painter, I could just as easily have been an electrician”.

Being a painter has both costs and rewards, and McCann admits that the road to artistic achievement has not been easy. But he also finds mental strength in the act of painting. “Life has been tough, dreadful at times. Dark days with drink and drugs – I go on paint benders now”.

He adds: “Who knows what problems and tragedies an electrician, say, may bring with him to a job. But he isn’t expected to reflect it in his work.”

His involvement and passion for painting began in 1975 when he befriended graphic artist David Browning, who had designed the cult album cover The Story of Simon Simopath for the band Nirvana (the other Nirvana of English 60’s psychedelic obscurity).

Browning’s was a basic but broad tutorship from the stacks of DC comics in his Islington flat, to the books, courtesy of Thames and Hudson’s pocket art series, that he gave McCann, along with gallery visits. Kenwood house in particular, where the two stood in awe of Rembrandt’s self portrait.

Now painting is McCann’s world. His studio flat has paintings hanging and stacked in every conceivable manner, congesting all available space; corner, floor and wall. Four large canvases stand in the bath.

“I paint because it excites me,” McCann explains. “It reminds me of the vitality of life.”

Steve McCann – Paintings & Drawings
26 April – 16 June 2011
Tuesday – Friday 11am – 4pm, admission by appointment call 020 8533 3500
Core Art Gallery
109 Homerton High Street
E9 6DL

Related: Rudolph Lindo