{"id":1850,"date":"2025-06-05T16:49:05","date_gmt":"2025-06-05T16:49:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/?p=1850"},"modified":"2026-06-29T18:17:32","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T18:17:32","slug":"oscar-wilde-and-the-imagine-wilde-things-exhibition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/oscar-wilde-and-the-imagine-wilde-things-exhibition\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar Wilde and the Imagine Wilde Things exhibition"},"content":{"rendered":"

The current exhibition in the McKinney Arts gallery space, titled “Imagine Wilde Things<\/a>,” takes its inspiration from a passage from an Oscar Wilde play. The play, Salomé, has an exchange between King Herod and Salomé where he says: “In a coffer of nacre I have three wondrous turquoises. He who wears them on his forehead can imagine things which are not …” and I always liked the idea that an artist with these magical turquoises might be able to create visions that other artists could not.<\/p>\n

In the picture above, the watercolor painting on the left (from 1988) is included in this exhibition, showing a figure with glowing eyes and the magical turquoises on his forehead. I guess this idea really grabbed my attention, because I found that I had revisited this theme again in 1994 with the oil on canvas shown above right, titled “Wilde Vision.” I sold this painting at some point in the 1990s, so I had forgotten about it until organizing this current show.<\/p>\n

I had also forgotten about a portrait I had painted of a young Oscar Wilde, also in 1988, seen below. That was based on this photo<\/a>, I guess I was pretty into the writings of Oscar Wilde when I was in my early 20s, based on assignments I had in college to read his work.<\/p>\n

\"Portrait
Portrait of Oscar Wilde, watercolor painting by Mark McKinney<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Just a reminder that art works are available for purchase – if interested in any of these paintings or others seen on this site, please let me know<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The current exhibition in the McKinney Arts gallery space, titled “Imagine Wilde Things,” takes its inspiration from a passage from an Oscar Wilde play. The play, Salomé, has an exchange between King Herod and Salomé where he says: “In a coffer of nacre I have three wondrous turquoises. He who wears them on his forehead … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3280,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[571,577,661],"class_list":["post-1850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-by-mark-mckinney","category-art-exhibitions","tag-oscar-wilde","tag-paintings","tag-salome"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1850"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3283,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850\/revisions\/3283"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}