From West Coast to West Coast

Kerstin McKee was born in 1964 and raised in a small country village outside the town of Varberg on the west coast of Sweden. It is a beautiful place, where the plains next to the rugged coastline meet the inlands towering hills with their deep forests. A family of eight would certainly have kept both parents busy enough, but still her father could convey to her some of his life-long passion for the beauty of antiques and her mother instilled into her a love of handicraft and folklore, and also strongly encouraged Kerstin McKee in her early painting and drawing. When this influence of her parents joined Kerstin's fascination for nature an artist emerged.

Art is an important part of Swedish education and mandatory for all children during their first nine years of elementary school. Kerstin was fortunate to have teachers that understood her passion for the visual arts and encouraged her to develop her talent. Throughout high-school she continued her studies with elective art courses and knew by then that art was to be the essence of her life.

Some years later Kerstin met her spouse to be, an American nuclear engineer. Following their wedding, she travelled to the US in 1989 and they took up residence on a west coast new to her, that of the state of Washington. Later on she was accepted as a full-time student at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. Her double major in 1995 was in printmaking and painting (and it should perhaps be added that the Cornish curriculum also calls for every graduate to be literate in all mediums).

Today Kerstin McKee works as a painter and ceramist living a life of dual residence, in Seattle and in Varberg, with her husband. She often talks of the resulting double influx of ideas and impulses, as nature and people of two west coasts inspire her in her work.

I am not a critic, but sometimes Kerstin's paintings make me think of Frida Kahlo. They have the same pristine, yet refined but powerful strokes of the brush and a bold assortment of colours. However, where Kahlo seems cool and observing from a distance, Kerstin McKee involves a warmth and a love for life and nature that appeals directly to the feelings and sentiments of the beholder.

Most of us have a notion that great painters produce their masterpieces while starving in a small, ice-cold attic, preferably in Paris. That is of course pure romanticization. An artist flourishes when able to concentrate on the work forgetting, at least temporarily, everyday worries. Kerstin McKee is fortunate enough to have a companion and muse at her side who from the very beginning has understood and supported her life-time involvement in her art.

Lars H. Lindh, B.A.
Varberg, Sweden

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