January 30, 2013 at 5:54 p.m.
Artist takes her inspiration from Bermuda’s ‘unnoticed beauty’
Macdonald’s studio is in Dallas, and she says that Bermuda is so beautiful in comparison, it inspires her to paint.
“All summer I took in places that I thought that I would be inspired by…like the side of the road with beautiful foliage. Everywhere in Bermuda is so pretty. I like unnoticed beauty,” she said.
“Going away and being in Dallas where you don’t have that at all is such a stark comparison. I’m so inspired looking back at where I was that it’s easy to take it for granted. Getting away is another way that inspires me.”
Macdonald held her first solo show earlier this year in the Bermuda Society of Arts. Now, taking into account the lack of available gallery space in Bermuda, she’s decided to try something a little different.
She’ll be presenting 33 of her oil on canvas pieces, using her father’s offices in Jardine House as a gallery.
She said, in a press release: “It is becoming more and more difficult for artists in Bermuda to find a suitable venue to show their art.
“There are few commercial art galleries and the Bermuda Society of Arts Gallery in City Hall is booked solid for almost two years. My father has office space in Jardine House and offered to let me use it to show my work. We will be temporarily converting his offices into an art gallery but all the while, his business will continue to operate.”
She adds that her last show was extremely well-received. “It was my first solo show — I’d been featured in the Biennial twice before that — but it was amazing,” she said. “Dan Dempster was showing alongside of me and he had quite a following, so it was great because he brought a lot of new people into the gallery. Since it was my first show people didn’t really know what to expect but the turnout was great. There was probably about 300 to 400 people — the whole gallery just filled up.”
Macdonald’s pieces for this show range in size from 8 inches by 10 inches to 42 inches by 33 inches. All are oil on canvas, Bermuda landscapes, and are very colourful.
“Colour is a huge part of my work… the way you can look at the same scene [in Bermuda] and it looks so different just with different lighting. The light of Bermuda is incredible,” she said. “The lighting makes all the difference. You could look at the scenes that I’ve painted, and they definitely don’t have the colour in them that I’ve painted, but that’s what I like, that it’s my version of them. I don’t want them to be exact.”[[In-content Ad]]
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