About the Artist

     Dave McKenzie is a retired Green Beret who has been painting for more than half a century.  Upon retiring from a long military career, he started a second career of ten years with a large east coast railroad as a freight conductor and locomotive engineer.  He now pursues art full-time.

     A native of New York City, he attended private art lessons from the age of 8, studying under Mae O’Meara and later at the High School of Art & Design, studying under Jules Golden, among others.  Seeing Andrew Wyeth’s one-man show at the Met in NYC left a lasting impression on him as a teenager, as did the works of Rockwell Kent, Maxfield Parrish and the Hudson River School painters.

    He has worked in and (arguably) mastered many mediums, to include oil, watercolor, tempera, acrylic, mixed media, colored and graphite pencil.  His connecting thread through the years and across mediums are landscapes and cloudscapes depicted in a high level of realism. He also enjoys leathercraft and woodworking.  When not creating one thing or another Dave is an avid sport parachutist and precision shooter. He currently lives in a small town in central North Carolina with Tui, his Norwegian Forest Cat.