Andrew Mackenzie – delicate ground

As much about rehearsing the movement of your hand whilst drawing, as the visual imagery it creates, Andrew MacKenzie’s paintings explore the romantic detachments from the real, when we choose to represent something through memory.

Surfaces are reworked, layered, scraped back and covered, ghosts of line drawings emerge as shadows. There is something print like, even photographic, in the images created, as if they’ve been impressed upon the surface.

Images from Andrew MacKenzie – Delicate Ground

The paintings, or rather drawings, describe locations possibly well known to the artist, and familiar to us all: kerbside trees by empty streets, bridges, the edge of a building site. MacKenzie states that the actual locations are no longer relevant, but it is the almost symbolic representation of elements together that drives the work. Often texts are inserted, describing human process within the environment.

By erasing and redrawing, the works become more about retracing paths on the surface of the painting, and the images persist through their own familiarity.

BBC Collective, 10th August 2006
Shireen Taylor