TRICKSTER UTOPIA PAINTINGS
2019-2021
Pandemic fever-dreams or antidotes, fracked rubble, safe zones, thickets, plant powers, and road trips.
Trickster caught my attention on a visit to Yakama:
"SPILYAY’S CHALLENGE IS ADDRESSED TO BOTH NON-INDIAN AND INDIAN TO LEARN ABOUT THE ART OF LIFE AND DEATH.
THE CHALLENGE OF SPILYAY IS ALL AROUND US."
"McPhee’s five large paintings continue in, and expand on, her tradition of highly controlled and elegant mark-making. They speak a gestural language rich with references to the natural world and to physical and emotional landscape. Her dense, cinematic and palimpsestic works invite you in through their scrim via nuanced points of entry: a dart of intense orange, a window of Naples yellow. The works assert themselves both as images and as monoliths, jutting out from the wall with hefty edges (which are themselves fully considered, revealing glimpses of the underpainting). Are they space or surface, or both? Entire theses are contained within their edges." -- Madeleine Ignon, LUM Art, 2021
Works from this series of paintings in exhibition:
Left Field Gallery, Los Osos, with TL Solien, 2021
Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, with Toshiaki Noda, 2021
Photos in slide show below : Solien and McPhee, Swerve/Collide installation at Left Field, photos by Elliot Johnson
