ELIZABETH MAGILL

“The drama is that these paintings are released and withheld. Sometimes there is wind; sometimes there is stillness. What is plain sits uneasily beside what is visionary. There is no simple meaning; instead there is much ambiguity and strange, coiled beauty. Something might be about to happen, but that possibility is contained.”- Colm Tóibín, from a newly commissioned text for Northern Sky, 2026.

Elizabeth Magill is one of Kerlin Gallery’s longest-standing artist collaborations, established when the gallery first opened in 1988. Since then, she has enjoyed a wonderful international career exhibiting in multiple public and commercial galleries across the UK, Europe and Asia. She returns to Kerlin Gallery with a new body of paintings. Northern Sky represents a new, more painterly, experimental expression of Magill’s work. The artist has refined her paintings to a smaller scale, balancing looser, more gestural marks with descriptive landscapes. These works explore the tension between abstraction and observation, creating atmospheric landscapes that feel both familiar and dreamlike. She was inspired by musician Nick Drake when creating this body of work and has named each painting after his song titles.

The exhibition is accompanied by a major new monograph, Northern Sky, with an illuminating text from celebrated Irish writer Colm Tóibín. Published by Kerlin Gallery, Dublin; Miles McEnery Gallery, New York; and Annely Juda Fine Art, London, this full-colour hardcover text will span Magill’s career over 240 pages.

Courtesy Kerlin Gallery.