TERRA MCDONALD, "The Land Series," Mar 18 - Apr 9, 2006, Summit Gallery of Fine Art, Banff

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TERRA MCDONALD, The Land Series

Summit Gallery of Fine Art, Banff

Mar 18 - Apr 9, 2006

By DIna O'Meara

Terra McDonald’s hands fly about during conversation, eloquent tools she also used to spread varnish on the large charcoal, ink and acrylic paintings of horses that form The Land Series. Each image looms out from a dull, white background; renderings of shaggy equines that evoke emotion rather than offer depiction, and which wander into the abstract. “I like the massiveness of them,” McDonald says, from her tiny Inglewood studio in Calgary. “The perspective of looking up at an enlarged body, someone small looking at something big. They’re enormous creatures, huge, bulky, full.” Horses represent an important part of Calgary’s landscape to McDonald, who grew up in the city and obtained her masters in fine arts there. She works with water-based media on large canvases, adding multiple layers, including gesso, to create subtle textures that become part of each horse’s coat. The solitary figures are blurred, as if seen through a fog, but convey movement through McDonald’s balance of positive and negative space. The eight to 10 pieces of The Land Series represent her first solo show at Summit Gallery.

Represented by: Summit Gallery of Fine Art, Banff; Virginia Christopher Fine Art, Calgary.