Kathryn MacNaughton: Interval

Beers London proudly presents INTERVALS, the first solo exhibition by Canadian artist Kathryn MacNaughton in the UK.

MacNaughton begins her artistic process by creating digital compositions that are afterwards meticulously recreated with acrylic, creating crisp lines and boldly coloured shapes reminiscent of the hard-edge graphic painting style popularised in the 1980s and early 1990s. MacNaughton's main concerns revolve around the employment of illusion, abstraction and optical effect, evoking the work of artists such as Josef Albers, Frank Stella, or Briget Riley, whose bold usage of simple colors and bold line-work typify geometric abstraction. 

Like Stella, who said his work ‘[forces] illusionistic space out of painting’, MacNaughton creates the illusion of depth and transparency through shifts in colour, and various - albeit subtle - usage of line and shape. Further inspiration is taken from Henri Matisse’s cutouts; perhaps a reference to his Blue Nude series (ca.1950) wherein opaque shapes when combined in certain ways suggest the female nude, or a spirit of bodily movement. Throughout, MacNaughton contrasts strong, heavy forms with somewhat more delicate graphic shapes, perhaps suggestive of the female form. Other times, wavy lines that dance across the picture plane appear like the artist's scribbles, perhaps suggesting cursive, or some subconscious gestural movement. 

It seems that with these pieces she has created a type of 'orderly' movement, where through structure, and a heavily digitally-influenced image, the painting itself seems to emancipate itself from its foundations and suggest something else altogether.