Look at the tree paintings of Elizabeth Magill. She combines an interesting range of techniques to evoke a slightly otherworldly sense of landscape. It is her use of transparent glazes beneath twisted tree forms that you might find interesting. Gillian Carnegie paints beautiful, tonal still life paintings that have a contemporary edge. Look at her flower paintings and the way her limited palette emphasizes form and tone. If you haven’t already, it might be worth investing in the book ‘vitamin P, perspectives in painting’ as it’s an extremely good survey of contemporary artists working with paint.

Elizabeth Magill

Elizabeth Magill (born 1959 in Ontario, Canadais an Irish painter). She studied at the Belfast College of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art, and now lives and works in London.

Elizabeth Magill‘s large oil painting, Blue Hold won the Sunny Dupree Family Award for a woman artist. Her work depicts four tall trees in a forlorn landscape with two puzzling human figures just visible. But the entire scene is uplifted by the apparently carefree use of yellow pigment and an eerie light which gives the picture a mysterious quality. Ms Magill was brought up in Northern Ireland and now lives in London. – Irish Art Blog

 

‘Sighting’ by Elizabeth Magill. This painting was exhibited in the John Moores Painting Prize 2012 exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery. – www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk

 

 

 

 

I really enjoyed looking at Elizabeth Magill’s paintings but the three paintings here particularly stood out. All these three paintings seem to use the same techniques which seems to be (especially in the last one) semi opaque layers of paint for the trees, or maybe even drips like in Islip, left.

These last two paintings, Sighting and Islip, particularly caught my attention because of the backgrounds with the white streaks. How did she create this effect? Did she paint over masking fluid then take it off? Or did she use some other method to obstruct the paint? One thing for certain is I will try and create this effect if given the opportunity in part 4 of this course.

Gillian Carnegie

I fell in love with Gillian Carnegie’s work at first glance, There wasn’t a painting that particularly stood out as I liked them all, her still lifes, nudes and landscape paintings. It wass hard though to fathom out the techniques that she used in her paintings. The leaves and petals in her still lifes with flowers looked like they have been created with one solid, smooth brush stroke, flicked up at the end while the vases had been painted with thin layers over the top. Is it possible that she painted the bunch of flowers first and then used glazes over the top to create the effect of sitting in a glass vase?

Her nudes, or should I say partial nudes where she has chosen the most beautiful part of the body to paint (or at least to me),  the small of the back, bottom and tops of the legs look both smooth and shiny, guessing that they were painted using both washes and impasto for the lightest parts of the body which is simple but very effective.

This technique is very appealing but would I get the same results working on a smaller scale in my apartment, I suppose it depends on the upcoming exercises.