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Why Ordinary Life Provided McKee's Inspiration


















McKee's inspiration comes from what he calls the 'Golden Age' of working class life.

He uses his memories of Sheffield in the late 1960s and early 70s to create universal themes.

His paintings are full of Wednesday and United shirts, lads on bikes, women in headscarves, fairgrounds, pubs, sunshine in Hillsborough, rainy days at Chapel St Leonards.

"My pictures are of normal working-class people doing what they do," said Pete, whose business recently become a limited company.

"It all started for me in Chapel St Leonards when I was five years old. That's where my strongest memories come from.

"I think there was a Golden Age of working class life and my memories are mainly from 1971 and 1972, it's a generational thing but there were a lot of feelgood factors about being working class then.

"People were just starting to be able to afford colour TVs and foreign holidays – before people started wearing tracksuits. It all went a bit wrong after that.
"When I show my paintings elsewhere, people relate to them."

At the moment he is busy finishing a Common People exhibition for Sheffield and 60 paintings to go in an exhbition in Scunthorpe – and he's thinking of hiring an old-fashioned charabanc to take a party of friends to go and see it.

The Good Education picture he sent to Noel Gallagher shows a young boy practising guitar in his bedroom surrounded by posters and album covers of his heroes.

"I thought Noel would like it and when I spoke to him I told him that I had practised guitar like that and he had too. I also told him that my son Charley practices while he's listening to Oasis. He liked that."

The Guitartown painting may be the launchpad for McKee's career to go mega but he has already earned enough to fulfil a couple of long-standing ambitions.

"I am into style and I notice the way people dress. I had always promised myself I would get a made-to-measure suit one day, and a pair of leather brogues that would last me a lifetime.

My Dad used to go to the pub in his made-to-measure suit on Friday and Saturday nights.

"I've done those things now. It feels great."

Source: Sheffied Star

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