Elizabeth Magill

London, Wilkinson Gallery, 23 February - 30 March 2008, illustrated p.45

Original canvas. The work appears in excellent original condition, ready to hang. No retouchings under ultraviolet light. Unframed.
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'If dusk could be seen falling in pieces, then Heartland would be it. If we could experience twilight as day breaking down into what can only be witnessed in the half-light, under fattened stars, the blue of the sky glowing more vibrantly before it fades, this painting would be its colours, its mood, its magic in a time when magic can't be spoken of.' (Cherry Smyth, Wilkinson Gallery, exh. cat., 2008, p.57)

Elizabeth Magill's pictures balance between the real and the imaginary; a seemingly natural rendering of silhouetted trees and twisting branches is revealed to be far more gestural and abstract than a first glance might suggest. Just as one's eyes adjust to the night-time - unveiling stars and shadows from the darkness - so too does further reflection upon Magill's works. The ordinary is far from ordinary, with colours and shapes in drips and pools transforming this world into something far more poetical. As Michael Archer observes, 'the large amorphous patches of colour hovering behind the middle-ground copse in Heartland echo the outlines of the trees but are are not readable as part of the same landscape. That they are not, however, only reinforces their standing as fellow occupants of the same painterly and imaginative space' (Willow Gallery, op, cit., p.8). A precise understanding proves elusive, questions emerge but the answers are not clear, and the pull of these works remains all the more irresistible as a result.