Waiting for the Blue Train – Kathryn Madill

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25th Jul 2014 - 15th Aug 2014

Waiting for the Blue Train – Kathryn Madill

Kathryn Madill is one of New Zealand’s leading painters and printmakers. Her paintings, drawings and prints evoke haunting, lyrical fragments of literature, legend, history and fairytale. In much of her early work Madill uses the medium of the mezzotint and lithograph, often adapting an intimate miniaturist aesthetic to present her illusory worlds. In her more recent oils on canvas and gesso panel Madill portrays landscapes both identifiable (the coastal regions of Otago, the ice fields of Antarctica, the surreal greenness of rural Ireland) and mythic. In the new works shown here Madill returns to the medium of the monoprint to present a series of anthropomorphic figures rooted in the narratalogical tradition of metamorphosis, as depicted in Biblical stories, Greek myths and modern literature. These she positions in a peripheral urban landscape, an ethical, figurative and geographic border zone both enigmatic and disarming.

Born in Ruatahuna in 1951, Kathryn Madill graduated from the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts in 1971 with a major in printmaking. Madill has since lived in Nelson, Waikouaiti and Auckland. She currently lives and works in Dunedin.

Le Salon de Refuses (a)Kathryn Madill
Le Salon de Refuses (b)Kathryn Madill
MetamorphosisKathryn Madill
PreyKathryn Madill
The Blue Train (a)Kathryn Madill