Martyn McKenzie graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2012, and has since exhibited in numerous group shows. He was recently shortlisted as a finalist for the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2015 at the Mall Galleries in London. His work often explores the landscape in its shiftings states, but his interest with the role of painting runs much deeper, where he sees it as a stage to test the notions of beauty and aesthetic values.
McKenzie staged his first solo exhibition La Mer du Sudat The Sutton Gallery in May 2016 since graduating from Edinburgh College of Art in 2012.
Martyn McKenzie in his studio
La Mer du Sud is Martyn McKenzie’s first solo-show since graduating from Edinburgh College of Art in 2012. This body of new work draws from his experiences living in Nice, France, over the winter of 2014/15. There McKenzie produced ‘South Series’ a collection of seventy-two watercolours that record the shifting states of the sea and sky. Painted en plein air from the same location on the Promenade de Anglais, each study is annotated with the date, time of production, and point of degrees facing, offering an analytical observation and study of the seascape. This series of watercolours was exhibited at the Mall Galleries in London after having been shortlisted as a finalist for the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2015. For La Mer du Sud, twelve of these watercolours have each been translated into an oil on panel and linen - six day works and six night.
Artist Statement:
My paintings evoke an ambience of a place and time from my direct experiences in the landscape. This is often informed by theories surrounding beauty and the sublime. My overarching concern is to achieve an intimacy with the viewer, creating works which do not rest on the hierarchies of art history. I choose to paint landscape because I wish to create a universal connection with the viewer, opposing the elitism of conceptual art that often leaves people feeling alienated from the artwork. In particular I consider seascapes as an eternal vision, something that moves between the personal and the collective, the past and the present. I am interested in the way our brains process viewing a familiar scene, signalling memories and emotions from an experience that is personal to us. In short, I believe we all value the chance to stop, sit, and contemplate the landscape. Making work that emulates this is my goal. - Martyn McKenzie, May 2016
Gallery Statement: Featuring a series of new oil paintings based around a practice of intense landscape observation in the South of France, 'La Mer Du Sud', is both a paean to the captivating magic of a sustained engagement with a particular place and an exploration of 'the painting study' as process. Moving up and down the scale from very small miniatures to larger works, McKenzie is an artist whose work is characterised by attention to detail and a remarkable patience and commitment. - Reuben J Sutton and Colin Herd