Stephen McKenna

For Stephen McKenna, classicism is much more than a style, it's a banner, and one that has led him to take ancient Greco-Roman ruins and make them into oil paintings that have left many calling him the most prominent living English classicist painter. With this series of paintings and other drawings and watercolours, McKenna's work comes to the Estampa gallery, which shows his work for the third time in an exhibition where his flirtations with postmodernism can be seen. It's a courting that does not detract devotion from his true love, classic beauty – as evidenced after spending two years painting an impressive series of paintings on the ruins of Pompeii.