Allan MacDonald’s breath taking seascapes reveal why he is regarded as one of the UK’s most respected and accomplished landscape artists. The beauty of MacDonald’s Art lies in its sheer physicality and meditative insight. His is an Art of going out to face the elements in all weathers, in driven pursuit of moments of understanding and connection. This essential honesty is directly translated into the artist’s handling of paint and transcendental palette. Light in every sense of the word permeates even his darkest and most turbulent paintings. There is always an eternal flash of optimistic blue and warm, resilient tones of underpainting emerging beneath immovable mountains or the steely gravitas of Northern Scottish skies. I’ve been following and writing about this artist’s work for over a decade now and his paintings never fail to astonish and inspire me. MacDonald’s unfaltering sense of the sublime in Nature and our human capacity for renewal through the creative Divine are at the heart of his work.
In Moonrise Strathy (Oil on board) large bold strokes and density from impasto, seeing clear to the ground fills the image with a palpable sense of energy and vigour. The half-moon and raging tide anchor the composition to natural cycles, confidently bordering on abstraction. In Northern Outpost (Oil on board) a glow of golden light breaks above the headland, shimmering over the water and into the viewer’s foreground. Loaded and incised marks down to the board convey the lashing sea in rich, vibrant green and blue, balanced with the warmth of lemon, ochre and cadmium yellow. In this ever changing furore, light is a constant source of illumination and a dominant presence; within the painting, the soul of the artist and the eye/mind of the spectator. In Rock of Ages (Oil on canvas) clefts of shadow delivered in bold, singular strokes and the dramatic sweep of light across the monumental rock face create a feeling of earth bound resilience and transformative wonder. Here lies the true lineage of Northern Romanticism, based on pure experience and communion with Nature, where human scale assumes, in cosmic proportion, its rightful humility.
Appropriately hung on the far end wall of Kilmorack Gallery, in the space where the church altar would have been, are a trinity of large scale paintings, each one inspirational in its own aspect. To the right, The Ravages of Time (Oil on canvas), depicting sea cliffs shrouded in ocean spray and turbulent mist, conveying a sense of vulnerability in the fluid tracery of marks cascading over rocks into the ancient depth of the sea. Standing on the shore of a harsh environment, the promise of emerging light prevails. The central painting Crescendo (Oil on board) is a moment of light and hope breaking through the commanding gloom of storm clouds, over the relative calm of the sea. A deep emerald horizon of green and rolling blue anchors the painting in contemplative stillness, while MacDonald’s instinctive and illuminating brush work bring forth a resounding sense of human aspiration. The final painting, The Coming Brightness (Oil on canvas) is a telling surface of built up paint layers, labour which yields a wide semi-circular swathe of light cutting through the sky, reflected in the sea and striking the shore. Thin drips of yellow light and pure white pigment are contrasted by the deep purple and mauve shadow of the sky. It is a moment of realisation borne out of labour, of grappling with paint and the elusive nature of painting itself. In Voice of Many Waters (Oil on canvas) we see an essential trinity of structure, expression and spirit rendered equal.
© Georgina Coburn, 2015