Carolynda M acdonald
HIDDEN GARDENS
COVER IMAGE
Shrine of Secrets | CAROLYNDA MACDONALD oil on board | 43cm x 40cm
+44 (0) 1463 783 230
art@kilmorackgallery.co.uk Kilmorack Gallery, Inverness-shire iv4 7al SCOTLAND
Carolynda M acdonald
HIDDEN
GARDENS
19 April - 17 May 2025
Carolynda Macdonald in her Edinburgh studio.
Hidden Gardens
Radio three chirps as I enter Carolynda’s studio high up in a repurposed Edinburgh office block. Sometimes more contemporary sounds hush the outside world too - Bombay Dub Orchestra is a favourite, Carolynda tells me. On the largest easel sits her largest painting, ‘Where Two Worlds Collide.’ In it a pair of scarlet ibis guard an ornate portal, and the ground in front of this arch is a scattering of roses and honeysuckle - offerings, I think, made by those who have already entered. The portal is a clear invitation to step through and enter this painted world, so I open my heart and eyes and gladly pass through. On our side there are too many noises and distractions from our gadget-rich lives. I brush past the ibis as I drift through seeking sanctuary.
It is pleasant here. High mountains keep the inhabitants safely hidden from the grinding world I just left behind. Cliffs and trees are reflected in a secret lochan. It is evening, and sounds here are like those in a coire, where footsteps and flutters are amplified, and the spaces in-between them are quietened. This is a healing place.
I shake myself out of this dream and re-enter Carolynda’s studio. Twelve paintings are lined up ready to head north for our exhibition - Hidden Gardens. Carolynda is industrious and focused. She trained as a microbiologist but gave this up in the late 1990s to follow the way of paint. Her work is
now at another level. She knows, as all microscope wielding microbiologists know, that there are worlds within worlds, but now as an artist she can open more worlds still.
I slip back into the sanctuary of one of Macdonald’s paintings. This time I notice that some who make it are carried here in the bodies of birds. A spurfowl brings the injured youth from Spanish artist Guercino’s Erminia Finding the Wounded Tancred. Stowawayed inside a small thrush is a man from a Solimena painting, and a starling harbours the mother and her children from Leonardo’s The Virgin of the Rocks. The birds that transport these souls so carefully are recognisable to me. We made eye contact before, in the past, in a garden. A wordless exchange is made.
Other objects - precious things - have made it here too. There is an ornate silver cup with scatterings of pins, earrings and daisies around it.This is inhabited by orange orioles. Small blue tanager birds occupy another shrine, and below the angry stowaway is a drift of buttons, pins and a compass. Every object is invested with life and they have been brought here because they contain the remnants of a soul. They are ghosts of lives lived. I hear a shrill clarion call coming from a yellow wren with a figure inside her. It is impossible to make out what she calls for - words are not the forte of paintings - but I realise that humanity and our stories and songs need preserving. Maybe that is what she demands, out of love and frustration. Fragments of old master’s work, passions, open-heartedness, a state of nature - some things should be venerated. That is why the birds bring them to this hidden garden, to be preserved and healed.
Four floors below, and a train rattling its tracks brings me back to this lofty Edinburgh studio. Carolynda is offering
coffee and I am eating a biscuit. It is too easy to forget the skill and time that goes into these conjurings. Old masters are not only honoured by absorbing fragments of their paintings, but more importantly by embodying their obsession with the spirit of paint. The looseness of Macdonald’s backgrounds gives fluidity and always offers more beyond the horizon. Compositions resolve themselves and colours harmonise in a canvased ecosystem. The aim here is to make the paint itself become a jewel. There is intelligence about how Macdonald approaches her work, but more importantly there are feelings too. Heart-felt human experiences drive each painting, something a well-trained algorithm can never mimic, because every Macdonald painting pulls in the other direction taking us away from this metallic world. In Carolynda Macdonald’s paintings, heart comes first and the messenger, or possibly your healer, may be a small thin-legged wren who looks you in the eye.
Tony Davidson Director of Kilmorack Gallery
WhereTwo Worlds Collide oil on linen 134cm x 125cm
Temple of the Rising Moon oil on board
60cm x 50cm
Guardian of Lost Souls oil on board
43cm x 40cm
Stone of Destiny oil on board
32cm x 30cm
Stowaway oil on board
32cm x 30cm
Clarion Call oil on board
25cm x 23cm
At the Edge of the World oil on board 25cm x 23cm
The Conjuror oil on board
25cm x 23cm
The Hidden Garden oil on board 25cm x 23cm
Shrine of Secrets oil on board
43cm x 40cm
Wild Heart oil on board
25cm x 23cm
Shore Leave oil on board
25cm x 23cm
Where Angels’ Voices Whisper oil on board 60cm x 50cm
Where Paths Diverge oil on linen
60cm x 56cm
Contained paintings are taken from the following...
Where Paths Diverge: Taken from ‘Apollo Revealing his Divinity to the Shepherdess Isse’ by François Boucher (c.1750.) Musée de Beaux Arts, Tours
Guardian of Lost Souls: ’Erminia Finding the Wounded Tancred’ by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (c.1650.) National Gallery of Scotland
Stone of Destiny: ‘The Virgin of the Rocks’ by Leonardo da Vinci (c.1491-2 &1506-8.) National Gallery, London
Stowaway: ‘Aurora Taking Leave of Tithonus’ by Francesco Solimena (c.1704.) J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Clarion Call: ‘Abraham Sacrificing Isaac’ by Charles Antoine Coypel (c.1736.) Musée des Beaux Arts, Tourcoing
Shore Leave: ‘The Triumph of Galatea’ by Nöel Nicolas Coypel (c.1727)