Her Nature is an exhibition of small paintings executed during the lockdown by Elizabeth Magill in her studio in rural County Antrim.
'I painted these paintings over the lockdown period because normally I work and live in London. Over the last seven odd years or so, my partner and I have been managing some farmland on the Antrim coast. It's a beautiful location, and we have planted five thousand indigenous trees as kind of a small nod in relation to where we are ecologically, but as the lockdown kicked in, it was the only place I wanted to be, among nature and the grown woodland, and to see the birds and the sea. So, these particular paintings came out of this time. They were a nod to nature but also a kind of lament to the strange times we were living in. They are also an attempt to suggest a kind of beauty; a beauty of distance and maybe a kind of passing of time, and a lament for that which we can't really understand. But I'm hoping that with the way I have painted them that there is an ease with the gesture which suggests a healing, or a rest.'
Described by critic Isobel Haribson as "epic, enigmatic and evocative", Elizabeth Magill's highly idiosyncratic paintings present subjective and psychological takes on the landscape genre. Rich with kaleidoscopic patterning and fragmented forms, these vistas are embedded in place – usually rural settings on the edges of settlements – but transported through the artist's imagination, memories, photographs or moods to be presented as something other: lush, visionary recollections of hills, lakes, hedges and skies glowing with ambient light. The term 'inscape' has been used to describe Magill's practice: landscapes not based on direct observation, but imbued with a sense of interiority and reflection. Though they have a cinematic beauty, her paintings can also be eerie or unsettling: trees or telephone wires conceal the view; birds are silhouetted in the dark; rare human figures feel distant, phantasmal; colours feel subdued, or occasionally toxic. Magill's complex and densely layered paintings are produced using various techniques, at times incorporating stencilling, screenprinting and collage, as well as the pouring, blending, dripping, splashing and scraping away of paint. Film and photography are also central to her research, shaping the way the artist looks at landscape, and infusing her approach to light, tone and atmosphere.
Kerlin Gallery was founded in Dublin in 1988. It has built an international reputation for its dedicated, meaningful representation of leading contemporary artists through its exhibition, publishing and art fair programmes. Its current site was designed by the minimalist architect John Pawson in 1994 and offers 3,600 square feet of exhibition space over two floors in the heart of Dublin City Centre.
