The Gentle Vibration of Things

About

Paint Talk Presents,

The Gentle Vibration of Things, 

An exhibition of paintings by Alice Macdonald,

The Gentle Vibration of Things, brings together a series of paintings made over the last year and a selection of watercolours displayed under glass. The paintings are bound by portraits, representations of friends, family, and strangers, painted from drawings and memory.  

The portraits recorded in a sketchbook, have been pulled into a process of translation and reconfiguration, from pencil on paper, to watercolour studies, onto canvas wherein distemper has been poured. Out of the stains, the drawn and studied iterations are re-found. Whether waiting, drinking a glass of wine, preoccupied reading or cutting pears, those portrayed are pulled from reality and memory with precision, but recast in a space where colour, pattern and physical form become dreamlike. The painted space throughout the collection of works is orchestral in its ability to synthesise translucent pigment, drawn and collaged elements interwoven and overlapped, with oil employed in a versatile and tactile manner. 

Daylight and moonlight are each cast as they are, much larger than life. Vast beams of light reach from the moon, their limbs like those of a spider, reach around a solitary figure. Two hundred and forty thousand miles of light reach into the garden with grace and ease, penetrating the night. The Ridgeway, an ancient trackway considered Britain’s oldest road, is prominent within The Gentle Vibration of Things. A vast landscape with rolling fields and woodlands is splintered and fractured by sunlight, the rays slicing through the sky and land. Soft light in abundance, this ancient road is trodden on by the artist and her mother, walking directly toward the viewer, out of the painting. They are only partially visible, the tops of their heads barely present in a sea of light, clouds and land.

Whether intimate moments shared, snapshots of pleasure in open waters, the portrayal of loss and grief, the passing from one world to the next, the breadth of feeling enclosed in this body of work leads the viewer through the elation of reconnection after two years of frequent isolation, to moments of wonder and optimism. Light flutters and scurries throughout the show, reflections kissing swaying tides, floral porcelain lies upon subdued tablecloths, flesh is depicted in pigment held in a range of binders. The nuanced treatment of materiality, drawing, and feeling conjures a sense of tranquillity, a place where time slows and cuttings of geraniums flourish. 

Alice Macdonald is a painter based in London, she undertook her Undergraduate at Falmouth University and completed the Postgraduate Drawing Year at The Royal Drawing School. Residencies include the Drawing Marathon at Rhode Island School of Design, Dumfries House and India Institute of Fine Arts in Modinagar. Recent Exhibitions include: Escape Routes, Oliver Projects, London, 2022, Dream Baby Dream, Paint Talk at Fitzrovia Gallery, London, 2022, ASSEMBLE at VO Curations, London, 2022, Dentons Art Prize, London, 2022, We Are Such Stuff As Dreams are Made On, Aleph Contemporary, London, 2021 The Amber Room II, Curated by Rosie Reed, London, 2021.

VO Curations, Project Space,

3 Angel Square, London, EC1V 1NY,

6th – 14th June, 

Opening Hours, 12-6pm

Private View, 8th June, 6-9pm