When Mountain calls to Water JANE MACNEILL
cover Tiorga Mòr Night study oil on board | 26cm x 31cm opposite Blue Hoy oil on board | 44cm x 60cm
Published by Kilmorack Gallery ltd, 2022 ISBN 978-1-7396557-3-0 Kilmorack Gallery, inverness-shire iv4 7al SCOTLAND art@kilmorackgallery.co.uk www.kilmorackgallery.co.uk
When Mountain calls to Water JANE MACNEILL 29th July - 20th August 2022
Across Bay of Skaill Hoy oil on board | 32cm x 33cm
When Mountain calls to Water
Sometimes it is necessary to travel to the edge, to cross water, to be where rocks call to the sea. These hills are island hills. I have been a visitor, returning again and again to witness their enduring presence, to see how the light reflects on them from the water, even at night when the air is charged with the potential of dawn. To watch the tide flow in and out over the Sands of Luskentyre, or to see the rush and swirl of Hoy Sound as Scapa Flow fills and empties, to witness night fall over it all, and to be there when dawn creeps in over the horizon again. It is a cycle that these island hills and mountains have presided over for many more years than a human can comprehend. The history of generations has played out under their gaze, and they remain, a steady presence. Night falls, dawn breaks, the tide breathes in and breathes out. The mountains stand. Jane MacNeill July 2022
1
Dusk on Tiorga Mòr oil on board 90cm x 120cm
2
3
Beinn na Cailleach, night study 2 oil on canvas 31cm x 26cm 4
Beinn na Cailleach, night study 1 oil on board 25cm x 22.5cm 5
The Kame of Hoy (diptych) | oil on board | 120cm x 179cm
Hoy Hills and October Sun oil on board 90cm x 120cm
8
9
Dawn at Ness 2 oil on board 13cm x 15cm
Dawn at Ness, study oil on board 21cm x 26cm
10
Dawn at Ness 3 oil on board 13cm x 15cm
Hoy Sound study oil on board 23cm x 25cm
11
Rackwick oil on board 76cm x 90cm
12
13
Snow on Ward Hill | oil on board | 112cm x 148cm
15
Taransay from Horgabost oil on board 21cm x 26cm
Taransay study with blue and yellow oil on board 25cm x 28cm
Taransay under storm cloud oil on board 25cm x 28cm
16
Dark Taransay oil on board 89cm x 112cm
17
The Moon and Glamaig oil on board 45cm x 61cm
Distant Hoy across Flotta oil on board 25cm x 28cm
18
19
Nightfall on Beinn Dearg Mhor oil on board 90cm x 112cm
20
Light Taransay, low tide oil on board 90cm x 112cm
21
The road home from Talisker oil on board 51cm x 64cm
22
Light spill, St John’s Head oil on board 36cm x 44cm
23
In Praise of Jane MacNeill
Connection: ancestral, genetic, collective and personal. It is something we share. When at Orkney’s Hoy, it is instinct to wonder at that great mass of water and rock, and remember the people who have sat in the same spot, possibly five-thousand years ago. In an outdoor church like this, latent memories are ghost-felt from toe to crown. It is easy to feel a presence. Jane MacNeill captures this connection in these wonderful works which, like a Rothko, say a great deal with an apparent simplicity, but they are far from this. They are painted, sanded down, thought about and painted once again... many times over until the reach a point of stillness. I have known MacNeill’s work since her graduate show over twenty-years ago. Back then she created gold-haloed-angels which existed in an ethereal dimension as well as our own. More recently, MacNeill painted birds, the ones around her home that she made eye contact with, and these also brought worlds together, connecting us to bird existence. MacNeill’s mountains do the same.
24
They are portals into the deep, silent, calm memory of a mountain and of water. When I look at them, I sense something of what they have felt, a deep slow time. This is a rare achievement. The forty-six paintings in this collection are mostly from Orkney and the Western Isles. There is the feeling of being on the edge of something. Dawn, night, the ebb of tides; they are the rhythms that colour Jane MacNeill’s changing pallet. One evening-blue moment is followed by a night-blue one and then the yellow ribbon of dawn. A painting is a two-dimensional object, but the world an artist paints has four, and time is the hardest of these to grasp.
Tony Davdson Director of Kilmorack Gallery
25
Sea Cliffs, Talisker Bay oil on board 44cm x 60cm
26