Blow Winds And Crack Your Cheeks

“Blow winds and crack your cheeks” – Peter Postlethwaite as King Lear.

Oil on canvas, by Paul McKee

Acquired by Warrington Museum and Art Gallery.

It is always gratifying when one of your works of art finds a good home. This is especially true when it ends up in a public collection and even more so, when that collection is in the hometown of the subject of that painting.
As painters, we make work, often in isolation and only get to share it in the occasional exhibition, if we are lucky, or via social media. When work enters a public collection it allows open and regular access to it, in perpetuity. I’m glad that this painting now belongs to the people of Warrington, in Lancashire – the birthplace of Peter Postlethwaite.
Below is my statement, which accompanied the painting.

In 2016 there were numerous events to celebrate William Shakespeare’s 400th birthday. I took part in a touring exhibition that year and exhibited a painting of the shipwreck from the tempest and an abstract attempt to convey the storm-scene, from King Lear.

I have always loved Shakespeare and one of my first experiences of live theatre was a production of Lear, at the Liverpool Everyman, in the early 1970s. Many years later, at the Young Vic, I was lucky enough to experience Peter Postlethwaite as Lear, not long before that marvelous actor died. I had seen Peter many times at the Everyman, in the 70s, when he was a member of Alan Dosser’s amazing rep, which included Alison Steadman, Trevor Eve, Bill Nighey, Anthony Sher and Julie Walters. As an art student, just down the road from the theatre, we frequented many of the same pubs and clubs.

I was unhappy with my Shakespeare paintings and, as I loved Lear and Peter Postlethwaite, I decided to rework the storm-scene with him in it. The result is this painting.

I have kept the sense of an encircling mailstrom from the original abstract and tried to use it to suggest the encroaching madness of Lear. I have tried to paint the figure in a similarly broad and expressive fashion.

I am glad that the painting has found a new home at Warrington Museum and Art Gallery, in Peter’s home town and near where I was born and grew up, in Liverpool.