Gallery Days 2

Exhibition by Margaret Donaldson of Yellow Court Studio

The images that face me in the gallery are full of colour, suffused as blushes, subtle pinks

and greens and sometimes, a grainy surface.

Parallel with me on my left is my favourite, papery ovals of honesty against a rippling 

background of pale grey blue water. (top right, in above image).  A drained sky, a pond full

of rain. Water is what I see anyway, and I think as I walk among the images, that it is 

always nature images that appeal to me, not realistic necessarily, but recognizable, like les 

nymphéas you know what they are, the lilies and the vision, that's what they are. After 

nature, well there are human beings and the buildings and artefacts made by them. Best of 

all is people in relationship to walls and buildings, people in houses, coming out of doors, 

standing in doorways as if they loved them, not as if they were forbidden or locked out, or 

waiting for a buzzer to open it, waiting for someone to answer their knock or bell, no, but 

doorways that embody thresholds and have all the patterning to show their symbolism, 

decoration that would be pointless if the threshold could not be stepped through.

Maison de L'Amour doorway, Saint Antoine, France

In the decoration will ye know the momentousness of what you pass through, how different 

it will all be, on the other side. I'm thinking of the archways at entrances of medieval city 

centres, archways that once marked the entrance to truly ancient cities, Fez or Marrakesh, 

Herat or Istanbul.

 

Archway near Kairouan, Tunisia

If we all chose just a handful, a small circle of images to illustrate our lives, what would you 

choose? I would have oiled and carved wood, and a terracotta coloured bowl, with a 

see-through glaze, uneven, containing sand, seeds and husks of plants that remain after 

summer has left us. I like the left behind, the earth colours, the incomplete, the sketched 

 and drafted, and the awkward and imperfect. So my imaginary glaze would be scattered

with the leftover detritus of nature, preserved in pine resin, scented and sticky, pine glaze, 

and cones that burn well in the fire, that spark and pop..

After the honesty reflections in water, another image I really like is of feathered big birds – 

so I see – with black beaks and bodies of fawnish white and terracotta, with a background of 

greenish blue, mould colour, fading into the conversation of the birds.

The third is a spiral, ammonite or snail shell, in the greenish light of early morning or late 

evening, it could be either. Then there are the shawled women, (top left in the first image) 

one leaning forward to the smaller one who inclines sideways, to hear what she is saying. 

Seen from behind, in a grey blue mist, perhaps evening is approaching, on the moor. But

they do not look lost, they look at home, just like standing stones with a view out over wold 

and copse, with a slip of river running in the valley, with patchy curtains of leafless trees 

lining the banks.

This image [E3] can also be seen on Margaret's website here

and her thoughts about art can be found on her blog