When is a work on paper completed? Andrew Mackenzie Q&A + exhibition

It's not too late to see Andrew Mackenzie's exhibition Work on Paper, which showcases a large-scale drawing in soft pastel and gouache, with lithography, etching, oil on card, watercolour and preparatory charcoal drawings. The exhibition is at Leith School of Art at the North Junction Street campus.

To accompany the show, here's a fascinating Q&A session the School had with Andrew. 

Working on paper can be exploratory, or it can become a finished piece. This is reflected here by presenting a selection of experimental studies and charcoal drawings, never intended to be exhibited, alongside ‘completed’ work. Now that they are exhibited, do you feel that these studies and drawings have evolved into ‘complete’ works? 

Yes, but when I was making them they were exploratory – I had no expectations they would be ‘finished’ things. At the same time, I kept the formats the same across different work, such as the charcoal studies, with some idea that they might work together as a series. I loved making them, and they grew into more than I expected. Now I’m thinking of ways they can feed back into the oil paintings on panel, with their immediacy and, in the case of the watercolours, fluid handling. I find making oil paintings quite labour intensive, sometimes taking months, or even years. The studies are deliberately counter to that, and I enjoy their freshness.

I included the studies here because of the fact it is a show in an art school, and they chime with some of the things we teach. I have learned at least some of this exploratory approach from the act of teaching, which is very much a two-way process. 

A series of small watercolours depicting a barn features in this show. The inverted use of colour gives a ghostly quality to the subject. Do you know much about the barn and its history, or is it a happy mystery?

The barn motif was selected partly for it’s ordinariness, building on the idea that the ordinary world is extraordinary, depending on how you look at it. I like the fact it’s nearby where I live, and that there is nothing remarkable about it, on the surface. It stands in for many similar farm buildings, and for the idea of farming (and land use) more broadly. 

But I am mainly interested in it because of the situation there on the edge of the moor against a dark bank of pine trees, with delicate newly planted birch nearby. It gives me everything I need to make work. There’s something slightly unsettling about it, and I have removed the sense of function (hay bales and sheep) in order to allow the viewer to enter imaginatively. Has something happened in that particular barn?

The inverted ghostly quality comes from the fact that since I started making work based on this place, the barn was deliberately burned down, leaving just a framework, a line drawing in space. It has become a ghost. I’m thinking about the landscape over time, where farming practices change, buildings and woodland come and go. We leave impressions on the landscape which gradually fade. 

Some of your paintings can appear to have a print-like quality to them, particularly in the striking use of strong colour against a delicate backdrop. Up-close, however, these marks have much more of a painterly quality. How has printmaking influenced your practice (if at all)?

I was working like this before I started to make prints. In 2008, I saw that the artist Graeme Todd was making co-publications with Edinburgh Printmakers. I contacted them, and they agreed to make some Lithographs with me. They worked well, so I have gone back every few years to make new prints with them. Two of the lithographs in this show, River Print 1 and 2, were made in collaboration with EPW.

I’m glad you notice the painterly quality to the marks – they are hard to see in reproduction! 

See for yourself

The exhibition runs until June 20 - Monday - Friday, 9.30am – 4.30pm. Find more information here. 

Course info

Andrew teaches on the Painting course and leads the Advanced Studio Practice course. Find out more here about Short Courses, Summer School and Year-Long Courses.