McKenzie continues, “I was also inspired by my grandma, who always had some form of her art somewhere… either displayed on a wall, a princess dress she’d sewn for a play now hanging in my closet, or a half-done pencil drawing laying in her sun room. She was so patient… I’d watch her practice an expression on her subject’s face multiple times before putting it in the official piece.”A continuing love of classical art is clearly demonstrated in the choices that McKenzie has made for her show. She has been practicing in oil this past year (a big move away from the charcoal drawings in her previous show), mainly because of her concern that this age-old technique has been dying off in peoples’ practices. “I don’t have the training to be proficient in traditional techniques,” McKinzie admits, “but I have developed enough of an eye to tell that you could layer the paint to make skin look more alive, and water more fluid and flowers softer. I love oil paint because it is so forgiving.”Recognizing the limits of being self-taught, MeKenzie expresses an interest in getting some better trained eyes on her work to teach her any tools that she might be missing. She would like to be more confident in her ability to capture emotion, proportion and colors, and to just develop more efficient technique. She has taken on a special challenge of painting odd angles in order to make the viewer’s eye move around her painting, but she feels that she still struggles with rendering the oddly proportioned images accurately. She also strives to be more imaginative and emotional in her art, as well as to find more time to create it in her busy schedule as a full-time Sterilization Tech for MCHC. “I’m immensely grateful for each person who has taken the time to care for, support and encourage me, and to those who have given me advice,” McKinzie says. “Each interaction has been a blessing in my dedication to making things around me beautiful and loving people around me as Justus did. And I invite people to take a look at my art page on Instagram, which is @gallery_of_jean.”