Early in 2020 Mckenzie flew to Morocco to rest, re-invigorate and re-inspire himself with a change of landscape and surrounds. The famous gardens of Marrakesh were his destination – places that he hoped would provide him with inspiration for the series of works that he was intending to make.

As it turned out, the idea of escaping to an imagined and idealised place took on a new and much more loaded meaning for Mckenzie as COVID-19 broke out just as he returned to Australia. The apprehension and experience of this new pandemic-struck world meant Mckenzie’s journeys in Morocco became more Arcadian, more symbolic, and more meaningful, as he recalled this time before the virus that has come to define this year.

Making the paintings allowed him to return again and again, not only to the gardens and landscape of palms and pools, vast skies and the warm brickwork all painted up in Marrakesh red, but to a state of mind free from the thoughts of 2020.

These works re-interpret the gardens of the Koutoubia, the Menara, la Mamounia and Jacques Majorelle.

Mckenzie love’s the infinite variety of palms and cactus, the juxtaposition of the wild and the manicured, and the constant changing colours of the Morroccan landscape. As Mckenzie is painting them, he is transported. He can, at least in his mind, escape to the Palmeraie.