Elizabeth Magill

Elizabeth Magill (born 1959) in Canada, is an Irish painter. She grew up in Northern Ireland and, having studied at the Belfast College of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art, now lives and works in London. She began exhibiting in the mid-1980s.

Themes and Techniques

A principal theme of Magill's work is "hauntingly distressed paintings of the landscape" [ [http://www.kerlin.ie/artists/Elizabeth-Magill.aspx Kerlin Gallery] ] . For recent work, the creation process begins with a photograph which is scanned and the resulting image sprayed on canvas before being overpainted with oils to add highlights and contrast. The result has been compared stylistically with that of the German Romantic painter Casper David Friedrich (1774-1840) [ [http://www.southampton.gov.uk/leisure/arts/sotonartgallery/search/view-artwork.asp?view=text&acc_num=9/2000&show_page=interpretation Southampton Exhibition] ] . She has described her work as

"I'm not so much painting what is there but what I imagine might be there," ... "These works are not landscapes as such, but more like suggested backdrops to how I feel, think and interpret the world." [ [http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/exh_gfx_en/ART26545.html Swansea Exhibition] ]

Apparent influences are the glens and coastline of Northern Ireland, where she spent most of her childhood, but the emptiness of the landscapes themselves is generally tempered by empty houses, electricity pylons, and the like, giving a sense of absence of human life and wistful isolation.

Exhibitions

Her first major solo exhibition was at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, in 1990. In the same year she was included in the seminal 'British Art Show', which first introduced many prominent younger British artists to a wider public.

She has had one-person exhibitions at various venues throughout Western Europe including
* 1998 - Southampton City Art Gallery
* 1999 - Kerlin Gallery
* 2002 - Anthony Wilkinson Gallery, London
* 2003 - Artemis Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, New York
* 2003 - Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, Dublin

Magill has held fellowships at the Tate Liverpool and Saarlandisches Kunstlerhaus, Saarbrucken, Germany. Her work has also featured in several group exhibitions, including
* 2000 - 'Places in Mind', (with Adam Chodzko and Stan Douglas), Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast
* 2000 - 'Premio Michetti 2000' at Fondazione Michetti, Italy.

Magill is represented in many public and private collections worldwide including those of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Arts Council of England, Southampton City Art Gallery, the British Council and the National Gallery of Australia.

In 2006 Sotheby's Auction House reported achieving a record price for Magill's work at an auction of Irish Artists. [BBC News UK, Wednesday, 25 October 2006]

References

External links

* [http://collection.britishcouncil.org/html/artist/artist.aspx?id=18901 British Council]
* [http://www.artfacts.net/index.php/pageType/artistInfo/artist/13464#Biography Exhibitions]