The eyes of ghosts peer out through a hard forged and hand crusted patina. "We live in a very old and haunted world filled with ancient lives," McKinley explains softly. "I am inspired by getting in touch with that." To accomplish this, McKinley works intimately with his materials, and indeed forms a sort of relationship with the wax, dirt, rocks, oils, acrylic and photographs out of which he coaxes his multi-layered creations. Of course, Josh's reductive technique is equally important.
Josh also finds inspiration in his dreams. His deeply carved surfaces indeed resemble a excavation through layers of consciousness and memory. A diaphanous film partly conceals drawings and dustcolored photographs. The ceiling of an empty room glows with sourceless light; a discarnate face floats in thick myopic darkness; an oleaginous angel drips down the canvas.
McKinley's craggy surfaces also emphasize temporality, associated with the memories of both individuals and entire races. He points out that the evolution of his paintings, a complex process of buildings-up and scrapings-down, underscores the evolution of his subject matter. "My paintings are visual accounts of people's history in a particular place, in the same way that ancient rock art recorded these same histories."
This fixation with history does not detract from McKinley's experience of the present. If anything, his sensitivity for the artistic history of humans helps him make sense of his own life. As he describes it, "one of the most vital ways to avoid feeling lost and confused in the modern world is to contact the ones who came before us through making art." Thirty slides of his work are currently on display at http://McKinley.neadwerx.com.