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Alix [MacKenzie] was a looser, more linear painter, dealing with amoebic forms, let's say, close to [Joan] Miró as opposed to my more static exploration of space.

Warren MacKenzie

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Warren MacKenzie
Age: 94 †
Born: 1924
Born: February 16
Died: 2018
Died: December 31
Artist
Ceramicist
Kansas City
Missouri
Warren Mackenzie
Warren Mac Kenzie
Dealing
Alix
Painter
Looser
Forms
Mackenzie
Close
Joan
Space
Linear
Form
Static
Exploration
Opposed

More quotes by Warren MacKenzie

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In working on a drawing or a painting, one can rework and rework and rework and change ideas until you get it the way you think is right at that time. With clay that's not possible. You either succeed the first time, or you should wad it up and start over again, because you can't mess around with the clay and still have it fresh.
Warren MacKenzie
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We did respect [Bernard Leach], although we also were willing to challenge ideas and at least put forth our feelings about the way the pottery was run, about things that were done, about the pots we were making, etc. And we would get into sometimes some very fierce arguments. We'd be shouting at one another because of disagreements.
Warren MacKenzie
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Eventually I gave up teaching at the St. Paul Gallery because of disagreements with the philosophy of that museum, and I got a job at the University of Minnesota, which was very fortunate because it was a part-time job and that gave us a great deal of time in our studio to work together and to make the pots we wanted to make.
Warren MacKenzie
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[I made in army] all sorts of dumb things, but it did teach me a lot about the silk-screen process.
Warren MacKenzie
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Living with [Bernard] Leach, who thought about pottery 24 hours a day, was a fantastic experience, and we really began to get inside his mind and understand what had motivated him to work all his life as a potter.
Warren MacKenzie
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I took a number of graphic courses, lithography and etching and wood engraving [at Art Institute]. And particularly as I got more and more into ceramics, I thought, life drawing doesn't have anything to do with ceramics.
Warren MacKenzie
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Eventually we even got to the point where we could disagree with [Bernard Leach]. I mean, when we first went there, gee, I mean, this was a man who had written a book. He was, in a sense, God, and we for the first couple of weeks called him Mr. Leach.
Warren MacKenzie
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Bernard's [Leach] drawings delineated every little accent on the pot, every subtle curve and change of angle and proportion and all.
Warren MacKenzie
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Every pot is not going to be a masterpiece.
Warren MacKenzie
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That [silk-screen process experience] carried over when I returned from the Army and took more graphic classes at the Institute. And Alix [MacKenzie] and I actually began to produce a line of textiles, which had silk-screen patterns on them.
Warren MacKenzie
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We both [with Alixandra Kolesky MacKenzie] got into ceramics, you might say, by the back door. Looking back on it, I think this was a very good thing.
Warren MacKenzie
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I thought, oh, I'm going to be a painter. And eventually my family had moved near Chicago, and when I graduated from high school, I went to the Chicago Art Institute, and it was there that I thought, well, now I'm going to be a painter.
Warren MacKenzie
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It was there that we really first came in contact with the work of Shoji Hamada, who was Bernard's best friend from Japan, who had come from Japan back to England with [Bernard] Leach when Leach was establishing his pottery.
Warren MacKenzie
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Chicago is a wonderful area because it's blessed with a tremendous number of museums of various sorts, not only the Art Institute of Chicago but the Field Museum of Natural History, the Oriental Museum on the south side.
Warren MacKenzie
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Every day we'd trudge up the hill - it was a three-quarter-mile walk up this steep hill to the Leach Pottery, and we would take our lunch with us and generally, I guess, make a nuisance of ourselves.
Warren MacKenzie
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[Kathleen Blackshear] just said, Have you thought of looking at this? and so on and so on and so on. And it was a discussion group where everyone had a say, and it was a tremendous learning experience.
Warren MacKenzie
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We [me and my wife] went back to St. Paul, worked for a year - again, I guess I would have to admit now, doing a rather shaky job of teaching people - but at the end of that year we returned to England and worked in the [Bernard] Leach Pottery for two and a half years.
Warren MacKenzie
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I went to the Chicago Art Institute, which was the best painting school in the area at that time. And I took painting classes - basic elementary painting classes and drawing classes of all sorts.
Warren MacKenzie
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Bernard [Leach] was, as I said , trained as a painter and an etcher.
Warren MacKenzie
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There were a lot of artists in St. Ives. In fact, since the time of Whistler, St. Ives has been noted as an artist colony.
Warren MacKenzie