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Don McKinlay

Biography
Don (Donald Norval) McKinlay was born and brought up in Bootle, Liverpool. As a left hander, he hated school; being forced to use his right hand, he developed a stammer. His creative outlet was through drawing. His sisters, later GI brides and now living in the US, recall their mother’s visit to the council school with a sheaf of drawings of the rabbits, which Don was raising for wartime sustenance. Up till then, her son had been beaten for the artwork, considered to be someone else’s. ‘This’ she stated to the headmistress, ‘was at an end’.

Aged 14, he transferred to Bootle School of Art and then to Liverpool Regional College of Art, working as a part time technician to pay his way. In the heady post war years at the art school, Don made lifelong friends. He was besotted with the lovely Julia Carter Preston, potter, whose father produced carvings for Liverpool Anglican Cathedral and designed the First World War memorial plaque. He was introduced to literature and European culture by Max Eden and Cyril Mount, the latter having fought in North Africa in both battles of El Alamein in 1942 with the 4th Indian Division, and whose works in the Imperial War Museum record those events. He admired the fine drawing of his contemporary, Josh Kirkby, who was later to produce the cover illustrations for Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. Between 1946 and 1950 he was introduced to Walter Sickert’s painterly photography-based work and came under the influence of Arthur Ballard, who advised he visit Paris, which brought his attention to contemporary European artists such as Nicolas de Stae l, Karel Appel and Antoni Tapies. He developed a non-figurative practice involving impasto reliefs in wax, wood and oil, and also accompanied Ballard to St Ives.

Two years of National Service interrupted his artistic development but following this, Don continued to practise art, associating with artists such as Sam Walsh, Arthur Dooley and Austin Davies. From 1953 to 1960 he worked as scenic painter and assistant designer at the Liverpool Playhouse. It was here, with his friend Austin, that he first met the young actress Beryl Bainbridge.

He moved from Liverpool to Rossendale, with his wife, Helen and daughter Sheenagh in 1964, renovating a National Trust farmhouse. Some years later, after he and his wife separated the farm became the place to which his friends, poets, painters, writers and musicians gravitated  - Les Palmer, Maurice Cockrill  RA, the eminent surgeon John McFarland and Prince Janak Hutheesing, amongst them. For a brief but intense period beginning in January 1969 Bainbridge moved up from London to live there with her children, Don and his daughter, Sheenagh, in the hope that they could ‘make babies’ and a life together. McKinlay, back teaching, preferred to focus on his work when he was at home and Beryl returned to London in the autumn. In addition to writing she had now begun to record her experiences and ideas more confidently through drawings and paintings.

Career
Finding that the theatre was all consuming, and that it was affecting his painting, he left to teach art at a high school in a post inherited from the Mersey poet and painter, Adrian Henri. Don lectured part time at St Helen’s and Liverpool Schools of Art, then at Manchester, teaching there for 29 years. As a teacher McKinlay was encouraging and patient. He always expected his students to work hard, as he did himself; he was keen to share his knowledge and ideas. He rarely admonished and was especially supportive of those who had physical and mental difficulties. His teaching was the foundation of careers in Art and Design for many of his students.

In 968 Vastupal Parikh encouraged McKinlay to compete successfully for a commission to produce the Tagore Theatre Mural for Chandigarh Capital Project Team, headed by Le Corbusier. It was completed during a year’s sabbatical at the school of architecture in Ahmadabad. It was during this time that McKinlay became immersed in exploring new and unfamiliar media, travelling Rajasthan to collect collage materials. The country and its culture had a profound effect on him and from being an essentially abstract artist he sought to incorporate autobiographical and figurative elements into his work. This has, since the sixties been characterised by a wide-ranging versatility in media and subject. Although the majority of his output has been concerned with paintings in oil, prints and drawings both sculpture and collage have been an integral part of his practice. Surprisingly, the body which has commissioned some of his more recent pieces has been the Church of England, which embraced his unique approach to constructing his works.

A prolific artist, McKinlay continued to exhibit whilst teaching, first at the Bluecoat and Liverpool Academy of Arts and later, with the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts. Influences from the art of previous periods are embedded in his works which were produced purely for the sensation of manipulating materials and ideas for their own sake. His integrity is evident in his choice of subject matter, which ranges from the political and social to the personal. He had an eye for the comic and ironic, and like, Goya, whom he admired, the visual manifestation of cruelty and tragedy as seen in contemporary conflicts was transposed into captivating images rendered with fluency and sensitivity. Folios of drawings include a record of the Cammell Laird Shipyard at Birkenhead, the Berlin Reichstag and Freidrichstrasse, and a series of paintings, the landscapes of Wales, France and Greece.

He was a painter’s painter, but he also produced significant sculpture commissions including the 'Christopher Gray Memorial Pieta’ at St.Margaret’s, Anfield, a Christ Child to accompany the Della Robbia Madonna in Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral and a Madonna and Child in wood for the 13th Century Chapel at Lancaster Priory. His work is also preserved in many private collections. His determination to explore his ideas through a wide range of media is uncommon in British Art; he distinguished himself by not falling victim to commercialism or courting popularity.