Palettes, past and present
Ian Mackay

On View: November 1 - 25

Opening Reception: Saturday, November 18, 2-4pm

The Red Head Gallery is pleased to present Palettes: Past and Present a survey of paintings from the last decade by artist Ian Mackay.

In that time, Mackay’s practice has focussed on “picture making” in both his abstract and representational canvases. His attention to complex delineation of positive and negative space, clarity of design, and colour harmony produce a compositionally satisfying punch. Formalist tendencies in his representational still life painting led to his semi-abstract still life “block” series and in turn these clusters of observed flat colour precede the pure abstraction where Mackay's recent works enthusiastically embrace a bold and lively palette. Eight new paintings continue the exploration of colour, shape and feeling.

This exhibition traces Mackay’s evolution from the muted and restrained to the bold and lively. It offers a glimpse into a phase when Ian Mackay explored subtlety and introspection through the genre of still-life. These artworks evoke a sense of quiet reflection and meditative light. But the heart of the exhibition lies in the shift that has occurred. Observational still-life paintings take a turn toward a cubist environment and ultimately to the freedom of abstraction.

Artist Bio:
Ian Mackay’s paintings are open-ended investigations of how mark making shapes aesthetic experience.  His practice reaches into the history of Western painting to recuperate aesthetic models of the past.  Mackay suspends notions of traditional still-life painting by combining observed depiction, modernist abstraction and encoded language systems. His paintings may be simultaneously read as information and experienced as visual phenomena, pointing to a logic of both, but also neither.  Depicting tableaus of coloured blocks, complete with realist shadows and reflective surfaces, his paintings push toward the illusory, while the patterning of his arrangements pull toward a symbolic, coded, and emblematic reading, occupying a neutral position within possible modes of aesthetic reception.    

Ian Mackay is a Canadian artist living in the Niagara Region where he maintains his studio. He completed his AOCA at Ontario College of Art in 1980 with studies in Photo-Electric Arts.  At OCA Ian co-founded the punk rock band The Diodes and the musical performance space "The Crash n Burn" at the Centre for Experimental Art and Communications. Upon graduation, Ian balanced career and vocation, including positions at Delrina Corporation, Symantec Corporation and IBM Platform Computing where he focussed on software architecture and user-centred design.  In 2009 he completed a BFA at OCAD in Curatorial Studies and Integrated Media. Since 2009 Ian has concentrated exclusively on his painting practice and his work can be found in numerous private collections.