Mary Mackay is an artist based in Stirlingshire. She became a full time artist after graduating from Edinburgh College of Art with Honours in Painting in 2014. Prior to that she taught biology and science.
Mackay is best known for her paintings, often abstract pieces, in which there can be a fine line between chaos, order and form.
Her abstract work is built up in layers where unexpected combinations of colour and form can reveal the direction of the work and the original idea might only be glimpsed as ephemeral elements in the finished work.
She creates a metaphor on canvas of a journey in the literal and temporal sense from her surroundings.
Mackay has travelled through some of the wilder parts of Scotland, but it is West Stirlingshire that resonates most and provides ideas. These experiences as well as involvement with biological sciences provide a broad and rich tapestry from which her visual imagery can be realised. Creating a woodland garden in her Stirlingshire home has recently fed into this narrative.
On recent works on paper, she revisits techniques and ideas from previous years, in which she prints, collages and draws. Seed heads and flowers of plants from her Stirlingshire garden have been used to make marks, creating works, which she refers to as ‘Plant Calligraphy’
Whether it is on paper or canvas the physicality of making is entirely satisfying; stretching canvas, pouring, dribbling, dragging, choosing, rearranging, inanimate substances, making marks with hand, eye and mind in harmony until the work reveals itself. Small intimate marks reveal detail and glimpses, often fleeting, of something recognised.
Mackay is best known for her paintings, often abstract pieces, in which there can be a fine line between chaos, order and form.
Her abstract work is built up in layers where unexpected combinations of colour and form can reveal the direction of the work and the original idea might only be glimpsed as ephemeral elements in the finished work.
She creates a metaphor on canvas of a journey in the literal and temporal sense from her surroundings.
Mackay has travelled through some of the wilder parts of Scotland, but it is West Stirlingshire that resonates most and provides ideas. These experiences as well as involvement with biological sciences provide a broad and rich tapestry from which her visual imagery can be realised. Creating a woodland garden in her Stirlingshire home has recently fed into this narrative.
On recent works on paper, she revisits techniques and ideas from previous years, in which she prints, collages and draws. Seed heads and flowers of plants from her Stirlingshire garden have been used to make marks, creating works, which she refers to as ‘Plant Calligraphy’
Whether it is on paper or canvas the physicality of making is entirely satisfying; stretching canvas, pouring, dribbling, dragging, choosing, rearranging, inanimate substances, making marks with hand, eye and mind in harmony until the work reveals itself. Small intimate marks reveal detail and glimpses, often fleeting, of something recognised.
