Exhibition Elizabeth Magill

Crawford Municipal Gallery, Cork, 23 November 2010 – the featured exhibition at the time didn’t hold my interest. So I called to the first floor permanent exhibition hoping to find a painting I had spotted on the previous visit in August, but discovered it had since been removed – not so permanent then.

The permanent exhibition is housed in a traditional style gallery containing a relatively small collection of paintings, displayed in two adjoining rooms. The section of the building accommodating this gallery was originally built in 1724 as the Cork Cutoms House.

Crawford Gallery (old photo)

http://www.crawfordartgallery.ie/history.html

My disappointment was soon compensated for when instead, a recent arrival that I hadn’t seen before, caught my attention. It was a painting by Elizabeth Magill with the title of ‘Blue Constrictor’.



Blue Constrictor, oil on canvas  153x183cm

This is composed of tall dark treetops silhouetted against a vivid blue and mauve sky. The inner area of a few of the tree forms look transparent; their tops fading into the sky above. From the low perspective a distinct sensation is created, of looking upwards at the treetops from below, serving to heighten their striking presence. Wavy snakelike lines of  yellow, green and red interweave the trees like dancing ribbons. Flecks and streaks of vivid yellow bounce around in the air and further flecks and bands of electric blue running up and along the tree trunks and branches, create such an energetic sizzling atmosphere – I could almost feel the static emanating out of it! The often thick brushstrokes contained in these marks appear to counteract the precise detail of the trees. The whole painting seems charged with a sort of eerie energy, providing me with quite a sublime experience.

On researching the artist’s work it was interesting to note that trees and birds are regular key features. Perhaps there is a bird or two in this one but I can’t spot it. The glens and coastline of Northern Ireland, where she spent most of her childhood are big influences. They give me a disinct sense of loneliness and isolation, devoid of human presence.

Also, on reading a little about the techniques employed in Elizabeth Magill’s work, she has very often incorporated photographic material in the process and in the case of the trees in this painting it looks to me as though this was a possibility, although it is described as an oil painting.

Parlous Land (Roches and Rooks), lithograph, 84x59cm -  later in the summer I discovered this on display in the Hunt Museum, Limerick and it certainly lived up to my high expectations.

She is quoted as describing her work as follows:

"I'm not so much painting what is there but what I imagine might be there", ... "These works are not landscapes as such, but more like suggested backdrops to how I feel, think and interpret the world."

'Blue Constrictor' a rough sketch I made at the gallery