British painter, born in London. He studied at the *Slade School of Art between 1959 and 1964 under Harold *Cohen, who encouraged a *modernist view of the importance of discovery through process. McKenna's subsequent development as an artist was very much based on a critique of this way of thinking, looking instead towards a kind of figurative painting. This was not the figurative tradition of the British art school as exemplified by *Tonks and *Coldstream, based principally on the life room, but instead an approach that could incorporate ideas, symbols, and historical reference. Therefore his dominant models lay in the French classical tradition of Poussin and of Jacques-Louis David, as well as later painters whose work looked back to classical antiquity, such as Böcklin and *de Chirico.