An Elf-like, French, Buddhist Artist – Annick McKenzie

When the art is light-hearted, mischievous, witty, seems endowed with magical powers and capable of taking you on a merry dance, you wonder who the artist is.

Annick McKenzie turns out to be an elf-like, French, Buddist, with a sparky nature. Her painting is the fissure her spirit can travel up to explode out into world through.

Art seems the inevitable expansion to her life, everything leads up to this point. She started out as a “housekeeper” at the legendary eighteenth century Château d’Hérouville, a residential music recording studio located in the village of that name in the Oise Valley, near Paris.

Château d’Hérouville

It’s where Pink Floyd took six days to record the soundtrack of ‘Obscured By Clouds’. Annick looked after a great many artists who recorded there, beginning with Berkshire’s own Elton John, who dubbed it the “Honky Château”, which also was the title of the album he recorded there in 1972.

But she always wanted to come to England, and wrote a letter to The Manor Studio, which was a recording studio inspired by the Château, in the village of Shipton-on-Cherwell, in Oxfordshire. It was the first residential recording studio in the UK, owned by Richard Branson for Virgin Records.

The Manor Studio

She got hired, and was here in the UK, with nothing but a suitcase, in less than two weeks. Diverse artists such as Radiohead, Mike Oldfield, Black Sabbath and the Cure recorded there, and even, Annick recalls, Peter Cook being one of her guests.

She married a talented recording engineer and music producer and moved to New York. They traveled the world living the rock and roll life, but she returned to The Mansion when their marriage broke down. Here she discovered and embraced Budhism, which has given her a calm centre from which all-else follows.

Very happily married again, Annick currently lives in Taplow Court, a mid 19th century mansion set high above the Thames near Maidenhead. It is the home of SGI-UK, a lay Buddhist society. Their philosophy is based on the 13th century Japanese sage, Nichiren Daishonin, who taught that each person can transform not only their own lives, but also society and the environment, by revealing their most positive and creative potential through the practice of Buddhism.

Taplow Court

Buddhism informs every aspect of her life and, for Annick, that positive and creative potential is the colour, life and joy she brings to her work. Although Annick only began painting when she was fifty, enrolling in a part-time foundation course at the Amersham and Wycombe College, she has not let a moment go to waste since. Her bright, citrus-pallet painting, Windsor in Colour, was chosen for the second year running to be the representative image of The Windsor Contemporary Art Fair.

The music, the unusual homes, the Buddhism, the courage to express her enthusiasm for all to see and share, speaks of her delight in life. She skips lightly through her paintings, behind every colour, with an ethereal spirit. According to legend, elves are semi-divine beings, long-lived and light-hearted in nature, who can use their powers for the benefit or the injury of mankind.

There is no doubt which Annick has chosen to do with her art.