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Stephen McKenna
Shortlisted: 1986

Stephen McKenna's realistic, figurative paintings use the imagery of classical mythology to convey what he perceives to be enduring human concerns. In the 1980s he also produced a series of urban landscapes showing the ugliness and hostility of the man-made environment. He has said that he sees it as the fundamental task of painting 'to attempt to see ourselves and our surroundings, with an eye which can discern the poetic reality rather than the deceptive wrapping'.

Stephen McKenna was born in London, England in 1939 and he studied at the Slade School of Art from 1959 to 1964. He was shortlisted in 1986, in recognition of his paintings exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Edward Totah Gallery.

This information has been taken from The Turner Prize: Twenty Years, by Virginia Button, Tate Publishing, 2003.

View Stephen McKenna in the Tate Collection