BiographyBorn 1974, Montreal
ANNELIE MCKENZIE was born in montreal, canada, and moved to western canada while still a child. she received her b.f.a. from the university of calgary in 1997 and shortly therafter picked up and moved to los angeles. struggling in the art world, mckenzie taught emotionally disturbed kids by day and performed as drummer in various indie rock/punk bands at night or made scribbly life drawings (there are about 400). in 2003, mckenzie had her first solo show at the ann donahue new condo non-gallery in los angeles. over the next few years she all but quit painting as she put way too much effort into beer-soaked rock music and travelled to vegas frequently, where she was enormously impressed with steve martin's collection of art as well as dale chihuly. it was with her final act of quitting yet another band in 2008 that mckenzie would truly come to be regarded as a rededicated yet still completely unknown force in the art world. she participated in local art shows run by feisty little old ladies who turned no one away. by this time she had long abandoned commissioned portraits, built up her own body of work, and effortlessly avoided any type of art world success. but what was beyond doubt was the enchantment that mckenzie brought to a small number of people who stumbled upon viewing the work in her overflowing studio.
appropriating the "human paint brush" idea of yves klein, widening the male gaze and forcing it upon a greater variety of human bodies, her tightly-packed, highly flora/fauna/cell patterned style answers and transcends the material of klein.
mckenzie's signature works, large format bodyprints surrounded by what she calls "emotons" (bits of thought, earth, and sunfluff) contain an underlying stillness beneath the noise of our human environments (landscape, thoughtscape, etc). mckenzie claims that she's "aiming to expose the physical reality of thought and emotion which fill the vast expanse of negative space/empty space echoing in between the molecules of our bodies and our earth."
considered anonymous, mack is known for having a dynamic personality hidden underneath a layer of stoicism, finely honed through years of a "frozen chosen" baptist upbringing.
Education
1997 BFA, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Selected Exhibitions
2010 urban:sanctuary, Los Angeles - group show: Within Reach
2010 Antelope Valley College, Lancaster - solo show: Unearths
2009 2nd City Council Gallery, Long Beach
2009 Long Beach Arts Gallery, Long Beach
2009 Viento y Agua Gallery, Long Beach
2006 Long Beach Arts Gallery, Long Beach
2004 The Rio, Encino
2003 Ann Donahue, Los Angeles
2003 Trim Salon, Venice
2002 Artagonist, Los Angeles
1999 A-Channel Studios, Calgary