Andrew Mackenzie

andrew mackenzie DUSK 5 February - 2 March 2022

andrew mackenzie DUSK 5 February - 2 March 2022

&Gallery 3 Dundas Street Edinburgh EH3 6QG andgallery.co.uk info@andgallery.co.uk +44 (0) 131 467 0618

DUSK To know, that is, with the knowledge that is a process of living. (Shepherd, 2011, p.1) There is no mistaking an Andrew Mackenzie painting. Silhouettes of trees loom out of dark foreboding landscapes. Scots pine, Douglas fir, the brittle bare branches of ash, elder and birch create a lattice work of organic connections fanning out across the picture plane. Each image punctuated by lone trees and sparse linear structures often spotlighted in vibrant oranges, reds, and magentas. And, while the visual essence of earlier work persists in this new series, we also see a subtle but important change taking place. Stridently contrasting trees have become quieter, more restrained, drawing us in to these visionary yet haunting worlds.

DUSK, when colour and shadows deepen before folding into the darkness of night, is the time-of-day Mackenzie likes best.

The charcoal drawings and oil paintings in this exhibition speak of winter walks in the wooded landscape close to his home in the Scottish Borders. The viewpoint is human in scale. From rough frozen ground we look out across flat bodies of water or up at plunging waterfalls. In Dark Woodland (Red Structure) our gaze travels between the solemn trunks of tall trees as their crowns stretch above us beyond the complexity of Mackenzie’s meticulously rendered paint-woven surface. Repeated lines of pristine white paint traverse thin pale lilac washes as irregular patches of snow dust the land before us. These landscapes may be figureless, but they are very much about our inescapable entanglement with the natural world.

In this body of work the readily identifiable architectural scaffolds of earlier pieces have given way to increasingly abstracted linear forms. Each one is nestled seamlessly within the geography of the local landscape. With this visual shorthand for the human made Mackenzie has found a method of disrupting commonplace ideas of nature as separate from us - something to be looked at and admired from afar. Instead, these succinct hieroglyphs point to a continuing history of place creation where humans and their environments are unshakeably interwoven.

Parallel to the topographies he depicts Mackenzie’s paintings evolve slowly as a result of both human intervention and the twists and turns of unpredictable material processes. A crisp, deliberate line of brick red alludes to the physical presence of a snow pole or fence post while a thick smear of paint, like the felt sense of encroaching darkness, arouses echoes of the preverbal, of our deep corporeal enmeshment in the ongoing cycles of nature. Mackenzie says of the process of painting: “I often have an idea of what I’m going to do, but once started the work takes on its own life and momentum. I have to listen to the work – often I feel like it’s the painting that is leading me or telling me what needs to happen next.”

In the first quarter of the twenty first century when the impact of human induced climate change is becoming increasingly incontrovertible DUSK quietly invites us to reassess how we dwell in and of nature.

Shepherd, N, ([1977], 2011) The Living Mountain. Edinburgh; Canongate Valerie McLean Artist, educator and writer based in Edinburgh. She teaches painting at Leith School of Art and Visual Culture at Edinburgh College of Art. She has exhibited her paintings widely and her writing has been published in artist books and journals.

Dark Woodland (Red Structure) Oil on panel, 100 x 200cm

Clearing 2 (Pale Yellow Structure) Oil on panel, 27.5 x 55cm

Clearing 1 (Leaning Tree with Electric Blue Structure) Oil on panel, 27.5 x 55cm

Snow Covered Ground, Field Edge, Tracks, Enclosure Oil on Linen on Panel, 21.5 x 37cm

Detail: Reservoir (wall) Oil on panel, 107x180cm

Pines by the Reservoir Oil on panel, 53 x 90cm

Pines by the Reservoir, sky study Charcoal, Soft Pastel and Gouache on paper, 22 x 41cm

Frozen Reservoir study Charcoal and soft pastel on paper, 22 x 41cm

Reservoir (wall) Oil on panel, 107 x 180cm

Dusk, Snow Poles Oil on panel, 21 x 37cm

Woodland Structure Variations (fleeting fragments of scattered architecture) Blue Charcoal and Gouache on paper, 13 x 28.5cm

Woodland Structure Variations (fleeting fragments of scattered architecture) Red 2 Charcoal and Gouache on paper, 13 x 28.5cm

Into the Wood (Velvet Deep Dusk) Oil on panel, 40 x 79cm

Frozen Reservoir (Door) Oil on panel, 31.5 x 55cm

Reservoir Wall study Charcoal and soft pastel on paper, 22 x 41cm

Reservoir Ghosting study Charcoal and soft pastel on paper, 22 x 41cm

Wolfcleugh Falls (put your ear to the river you hear trees) Oil on Linen on Panel, 21.5 x 37cm

Detail: Dark Woodland (Red Structure) Oil on panel, 100 x 200cm

Snow Covered Fallen Pine (Red Structure) Oil on panel, 30 x 60cm

Woodland Structure Variations (fleeting fragments of scattered architecture) Charcoal and Gouache on paper, 13 x 28.5cm each

Woodland Structure Variations (fleeting fragments of scattered architecture) Pale Yellow Charcoal and Gouache on paper, 13 x 28.5cm

Woodland Structure Variations (fleeting fragments of scattered architecture) Red 3 Charcoal and Gouache on paper, 13 x 28.5cm

ANDREW MACKENZIE

2018 The Salon Fair, New York, with Sarah Myerscough Gallery 2017 Process and Possibilities, 50th Anniversary – 8 E D U C AT I O N

printmakers selected from the archive, EPW Edinburgh College of Art:

Cause and Effect, Tatha Gallery, Newport-on-Tay 1991 - 1993 Master of Fine Art (M.F.A.) 2016 Converge, invited artist at Visual Art Scotland, RSA, 1987 - 1991 BA (hons), Drawing and Painting

Edinburgh SOLO EXHIBITIONS

Contemporary Printmakers, Wetpaint Gallery, Stroud 2022 DUSK, &Gallery, Edinburgh

Fly2016, Visual Art Scotland 2019 The Opposite Shore, &Gallery, Edinburgh 2015 Curved Stream, 8 Contemporary Artists at Traquair 2018 Vertical Forms, Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary

House, Innerleithen 2017 Temporary Structures, Sarah Myerscough Gallery, London 2015 Abstraction From Architecture, Edinburgh Printmakers 2014 Veined With Shadow-Branches, Sarah Myerscough

Workshop Gallery

Gallery, London

New Work, Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary, Canada 2013 Approaching the Verge, an talla solais, Ullapool, Scotland InPrint Biennale, Hull School of Art and Design, Hull 2012 Silver between the Falls, Sarah Myerscough Gallery, 2014 Paris Art Fair, Sarah Myerscough Gallery, Grand Palais, London Paris 2010 Still Surfacing, Sarah Myerscough Gallery, London

Space//Squared, White Walls Gallery, San Francisco 2008 Cross Section of a Cascade, Sarah Myerscough, London 2013 Paris Art Fair, Sarah Myerscough Gallery, Paris 2006 Delicate Ground, Amber Roome Contemporary Art,

Drawn Away Together, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh Edinburgh

Coast Arts Festival, Duff House, Banff, Scotland 2005 Counterpart, with James Lumsden, Sarah Myerscough, A Parliament of Lines, Pier Art Centre, Stromness, London Scotland 2003 Sunlight on Grey Painted Steel, Watching Water Rise,

A Parliament of Lines, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne,

Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh Australia 2002 New Work, Merz Gallery, Edinburgh 2012 A Parliament of Lines, City Art Centre, Edinburgh

New Work, Yorkshire Sculpture Park (with Edward

Wider Than a Postcard, Breezeblock Gallery, Portland,

Teasdale and Christine Jones), Wakefield Oregon 1999 Semi-detached, East Kilbride Arts Centre, East

Evaluation of Space, Rochester Art Gallery, Rochester

Kilbride, Scotland 2011 RSA Annual Exhibition, invited artist, Edinburgh

New work, Courthouse Gallery, Ballycastle, Republic of Fleming Collection Summer Exhibition, London Ireland

Stobhill Hospital, permanent collection, Glasgow 1998 Between states, Bellevue Gallery, Edinburgh 2010 The Secret Confession, Edinburgh College of Art

Between states, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh

London Art Fair, Sarah Myerscough

20/21 Art Fair, London SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

Abstract Matters, Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh 2022 London Art Fair, & Gallery Affordable Art Fair, New York, Sarah Myerscough

Thresholds, with Rebecca Appleby, Marchmont House, 2009 London Art Fair, Sarah Myerscough

Scottish Borders 20/21 Art Fair, London 2021 Woodland Structure, Marchmont House, Scottish Borders

Seven Short Sails, online group project

SURGE, Tatha Gallery, Newport-on-Tay

Strata, Patriothall Gallery, Edinburgh 2019 Alight, Visual Arts Scotland, RSA, Edinburgh

Strata 2, Sarah Myerscough Fine Art, London

Conversations in Wood, Marchmont House, Scottish

New Commissions from Edinburgh Printmakers, Borders

EPW Gallery, Edinburgh

London Art Fair, &Gallery

2008 London Art Fair, Sarah Myerscough

Toronto Art Fair, Sarah Myerscough

10 Decades, Edinburgh College of Art Centenary

– Fleming Collection Gallery, London

Andrew Mackenzie and Jackie Anderson, Amber Roome

Contemporary Art, Edinburgh 2007 10 Decades, Edinburgh College of Art Centenary

– City Art Centre, Edinburgh

Equinox, Sarah Myerscough Fine Art, London

Group show, Amber Roome Contemporary Art, Edinburgh

London Art Fair, Sarah Myerscough and Amber Roome

Transcriptions, Sarah Myerscough Fine Art, London

Art in Healthcare auction, Lyon and Turnbull, Edinburgh

Toronto Art Fair, Sarah Myerscough Fine Art 2006 London Art Fair, Sarah Myerscough Fine Art 2005 Viewpoint, National Galleries of Scotland, Duff House, Banff

London Art Fair, Sarah Myerscough Fine Art, London

Greetings From Edinburgh, curated by Helen Monaghan,

Patriothall Gallery, Edinburgh

Fearful Symmetry, Merz Gallery, Edinburgh 2004 The Birthday Party, The Collective Gallery, Edinburgh

ArtLondon, with Sarah Myerscough Fine Art 2003 Miniatures, Sarah Myerscough Fine Art, London

ArtFutures 2003, Contemporary Art Society, London

Past Standing, The Changing Room, Stirling

Work on Paper, Eye-2, Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh 2002 Aphelion, Art.tm, Inverness

ArtFutures 2002, Contemporary Art Society, London 2001 Fresh Art, Business Design Centre, London

Andrew Mackenzie, Shane Bradford, Luke Frost and Mark

Pearson, Sam Pease, London 2000 On Land, Travelling Gallery, various locations, Scotland

Primed (with Paul Keir, James Lumsden and Raymond

Mulligan), Bellevue Gallery, Edinburgh 1999 In The Summertime, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh 1997 Shockproof (with Donald Urquhart, Paul Keir and

Graham Todd), Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary, Canada AWARDS 2016 Open Eye Gallery Award at Converge, Visual Art Scotland 2015 GF Smith Award, InPrint Biennale, Hull

Visual Art and Craft Award, Scottish Borders Council/

Creative Scotland

2009 SAC research and development grant

Hope Scott Trust Award towards catalogue for Strata 2003 Visual Arts Award, City of Edinburgh Council 2001 Visual Arts Award, City of Edinburgh Council 1999 Arts Trust for Scotland Award, Scottish Arts Council 1999 Scottish Arts Council Assistance Grant 1999 Ballinglen Arts Foundation: two month residency in Co.

Mayo, Republic of Ireland 1998 Hope Scott Trust Award, Edinburgh 1991 London Royal Academy Aeneas Award: scholarship to Florence 1990 Erasmus Exchange Program: three month period of

study in Athens School of Fine Art PUBLIC ART 2021 Woodland Structure: permanent outdoor sculptural

installation for Marchmont House 2021 Major commission for the Edinburgh Haematology

Centre at Western General Hospital, Edinburgh 2016/22 Project Artist for Hawick Flood Protection Scheme –

public art commission with Alec Finlay and Gill Russell 2015 Hawick High School Landscape and Site-specific

Concrete Poetry Project 2014 Sloane Square commission 2013 The Grace of the Birch, Stobhill Hospital 2011 Crown House/No 1 Kingsway London COLLECTIONS • Marchmont House • Moxon Architects, Crathie • University of Edinburgh • Stobhill Hospital, Glasgow • Edinburgh City Art Centre • Western General Hospital, Edinburgh • Royal Academy, London • Edinburgh College of Art • Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Co Mayo, Republic of Ireland • Art in Healthcare Scotland • Fleming Collection, London • Fidelity Investments • Bank of America • Bank of Scotland • Lord and Lady Stevenson • Edinburgh Academy

Published by &Gallery 3 Dundas Street Edinburgh, EH3 6QG © &Gallery All works © Andrew Mackenzie

&Gallery, 3 Dundas Street, Edinburgh, EH3 6QG