McKenzie's works first caught my eye at an MFA show in LA. These are from her current show and continue her interest in original works by the Old Masters, the Beaver Hall collective of Canada (new to me, too.) or works of those styles. The works all imagine and impersonate portraits and scenes rather than replicate. This work derives from the (mostly) 18th-Century French portrait painter Jean-Baptiste Greuze.
When I asked her to describe her work and process she responded that she considers her source paintings as "readymade" imagery which she then transforms. Part 'intertextual', part scrapbooking. She incorporates frames that she finds and then decorates and paints. The thick paint is about accumulation and a way to add onto images and objects that she loves adding a new body, perhaps somewhat grotesque, to possibly 'cutesy' imagery. And fun.