KAYE DONACHIE

the slides she shows

of other women

who have painted other faces

the stories their stories

she tells as if it were

her story her own workthe sense of their

work in the biography

that she tells

this image she has

of them

her passion in

the telling is the way

you know she is

an artist

she in her own

way forming the passion

of others with

her own

From More than pure form, Rena Rosenwasser, 1971

Kaye Donachie’s paintings distil and redeem historical images of specific female protagonists, often imbued with a sense of place. In Silent as Glass the collated writings and images of poets such as Katherine Mansfield and Iris Tree provide inspiration. The narratives within the paintings are given structure by an almost visceral sensation of light that outlines and gives intensity to their surfaces, evoking a poetic image. Still life, landscape and portraiture are presented together in this exhibition. These new images echo one another and attempt to compress stories, voices and emotional labour into a reconfigured form.

b. 1970, Glasgow, UK, lives and works in London, UK. Recent solo exhibitions include Under the clouds of her eyelids, Le Plateau Frac ile-de-France, Paris, France, 2017 and Dearest..., The Fireplace Project, East Hampton, USA, 2015. Selected group exhibitions include The Critic as Artist, curated by Michael Bracewell and Andrew Hunt, Reading International, Reading, UK, 2017; The Painting Show, Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius, Lithuania, travelled to Limerick City Gallery of Art, Limerick, Ireland and Goyang Cultural Foundation, Korea (C), 2016–2017; (un mural, des tableaux), Frac Île de France Le Plateau, Paris, France, 2015; Gen X, Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea S. Francesco, San Marino, 2013; Secret Societies, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, 2011 and The Dark Monarch: Magic and Modernity in British Art, Tate St Ives, 2009.