Price on request

Inscribed with title and signed with initials
Welsh slate, with patinated metal frame; 6 &/2 × 5 1/8 in. (16.5×13 cm.) irregular
Provenance: the artists estate
Price on request

Signed with initials
Polychrome carved wood, in the original oak frame; 15 × 9½ in. (38 × 24 cm.)

‘I keep on drawing and re-drawing until what I’ve produced simply asks to be carved’ (John McKenzie, Abroath Herald, 1 February 1963).
The remarkable work of John McKenzie has only recently come back to light. Despite exhibiting his slates at the Royal Scottish Academy Summer Exhibition, the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, and in two solo exhibitions at the Public Library in his home town of Abroath, he had no interest in the commercial aspects of his work and sold no more than a handful of sculptures during his lifetime. Using Welsh slate, and working with engraver’s tools, he produced three to four reliefs a year, which amounted to less than a hundred in his entire career.

By day a charge-hand messman on HMS Condor (and later a railwayman), the reclusive McKenzie indulged his passion for carving by night and at the weekends. Producing in equal number scenes of contemporary life and scenes of antiquity, it is especially in the former that he found his most distinctive voice. His images, whether the carved wooden reliefs of the 1930s, or works in slate that date from the late 1930s, are rich in symbolism, which though often obscure is always engaging.

Liss Fine Art are currently preparing a catalogue of his work.

We are grateful to Paul Viney for assistance.
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Welsh slate; each 11 1/2 ×3 1/2 in.(29×9 cm.)
Provenance: the artists estate

Thumbnail panels:

John McKenzie 1897 - 1972

John McKenzie was born in Glasgow in .1897. His father, also John, worked on the railways and his mother Isabella was in domestic service. John and his younger brother Allan, who was born in 1898, both F fought in the First World War in the Royal Artillery and Gordon Highlanders respectively. Allan was killed in action on June 15th 1918.
After the war McKenzie continued to live in Glasgow but following the death of his father, he moved to Arbroath with his mother. By day he was a steward in the officers’ mess on H.M.S. Condor which was stationed at Arbroath as part of the Fleet Air Arm Training School. By night and at the weekends he indulged his passion for carving. Initially he tried his hand at wood carving but was disappointed with the results whereupon he switched to slate. As his mother didn't like the home being filled with slate dust he worked in a shed at the bottom of the garden. It was painstaking work and he rarely produced more than three or four plaques in a year. John McKenzie was a tall, quiet and deeply private man who invariably was to be seen with a pipe clamped between his teeth. Despite exhibiting his slates at the R.S.A. Summer Exhibition, the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts and the Arbroath Public Library, he had no interest in the commercial aspect of his work and it is not thought that he sold more than a handful of pieces in his lifetime. When he died, he left his estate to his housekeeper who had looked after him and his mother for many years.