LISA MCKENDRICK: WHEN THE PAINTING ISN'T LOOKING

LISA MCKENDRICK's stark, yet convivial canvases inhabit a visual world whose subjects are disarmingly detained in that space between imagination and reality.  She draws on a wide range of folk and urban sensibilities to evoke dream as well as a very lucid personal image of real life. Calling on a background of multiple cultures, she aptly creates an iconography that is at once complex in  its execution and yet simple in its structural approach. Geometry and architecture are a basic structure for compositions that are filled with innumerable layers of visual meaning.  The past is called upon generously to impart a heart of personal history, as well as ironic good humor.  This is a universe where an image emanates not only mystery, but obvious attention to the act of some happy chance.   Aptly using these gifts, McKendrick understands the wellspring of creative narrative that occurs when an artist is in flow to the provinces of idea and purpose. Elements of control vie for the attention of the subconscious, and it's a perfectly matched, and collegial game of expression. What the viewer enters into in these images is a set of fascinating possibilities, hidden clues, and a chess-like movement of color and line. One can't leave these worlds and personages quickly; the eye is rewarded with close inspection. This is an art that celebrates many layers of soul, and it takes its time in adding more. It's worth every viewing.

You state that you try to master the technique of “catching the painting while it isn’t looking.” It reminds me of the line that life is what happens when you are doing something else. This idea seems to be about letting chance be at play. Can you talk more about this?

It’s about allowing chance to happen, but it is also about controlling chance in a way that allows the painting to come fourth. Catching it while it isn’t looking is about catching it while it is off guard and in a state where it reveals something.  When you catch someone while they are not looking you would hope that their actions happen naturally without an awareness of being watched. I like the idea that the canvas knows something that I don’t.

Though all your paintings have a remarkable sense of story narrative to them, you permit the viewer the expanse of their own imaginations to fill in whatever narratives (if at all) they wish to find in the images. This happens especially in the Mexican series, certainly, however, the single image for me that strikes a constant chord of mystery is the painting of the green car and figure, in the Landscape and Alchemy series. I find myself filling in a plethora of possible narratives to that singular image. It’s riveting to me. 

Thank you that is also one of my favorites. Yes I think it requires a little bit of participation from the viewer to use their imagination to fill in the gaps or read between the lines.  The Car painting was interesting to me when I painted it and I went through a range of emotions. On that level you could say that my work is personal, because I make an emotional connection to the painting but at the same time the image could mean nothing to me or it might be like watching a film where you relate and become emotionally involved for a time but only for the duration of the film.  The figure is ambiguous and obscured; he is definitely a mystery man and is probably happy to remain unsolvable.  It is about a search for the mystery rather than the solving of a mystery.  This element of the mystery is interesting to me and I refer to it a lot in my work.

Your paintings have a quality that is distinctive for their pentimento: layer over layer of images seem to come to the surface, or fall below it in a beautiful flow of energy. The planes and perspectives that you choose to construct an image provoke essential reconsideration of relational space.

I often like to fill a canvas with objects or figures which may or may not have a logical relationship to each other and do not necessarily not follow lines of perspective. The challenge then is to establish the relationship between the objects, figures and landscape.  I’ve used a horizon line a lot in the Alchemy and Landscapes paintings and this worked because it automatically gave a sense of distance and space, but then I painted in the objects and figures as though they were stuck on or painted on the canvas without regard for perspective i.e. sometimes objects seem to fly into or protrude out of the canvas. I wanted to deny a logical sense of space and leave the canvas as an open ended puzzle.  It means these paintings have a sense of absurdity and playfulness about them.   

Architecture and geometric structure are very strong presences in your work. What are the inspirations for this? They impart a wonderful sense of play. 

Living in a big city like London you notice that the city is always under construction, it is never finished. The city has layers and buildings upon buildings and extensions to structures and endless construction sites or they are always digging up parts of the road and inserting piping etc.  I find all this quite interesting to observe and to incorporate into my work.  In the paintings I see these geometric structures as remains of the man-made world.

The “Urban Myths” series is extraordinary to me, for its rich palette of browns and reds, and its surreal iconography of piping and mechanical structures. The objects have that particular “temperature, speed, or emotion of the space” they inhabit. How did these paintings begin?

With that series I wanted to contrast the nothingness or openness, which is often found in landscape with the crudeness of man-made constructions. I started those paintings with a background which was inspired by the city skyline.  It was a combination of all the hues that you find as the sun is setting over the industrial areas where the colors get a bit muddy from the smog or dirtiness of the city.  Then I worked from photographs that I had taken of machinery and mechanical parts of engines. I painted those paintings in a way where the mechanical objects overlap and get mixed up with images of flesh and it becomes difficult to distinguish which are parts are which.  These paintings also suggest an inner landscape and in many ways it could also be read on that level; that of the psyche.

You have a fascinating mix of cultures in your background: you were born of Mexican descent, raised in New Zealand, and now reside in London. How have these three distinct ethnic identities informed  and developed your various ideas throughout your life as an artist?

I think I tried to transcend all those things and I wanted to be from no particular place and to fragment my identity even further by coming to London. But my nostalgia for the things which are deeply rooted in my past manifest themselves in the painting causing me to have to think about it differently. For me there is a familiarity in the Mexican things and in the landscape which reminds me of New Zealand so I think that cultural background really is about being drawn to things which are familiar and deeply rooted. In many ways those paintings are an exploration of this familiarity and in hindsight I was probably learning about the value of such things. 

How did you first come to art as a creative focus in your life?

I think some people just navigate themselves towards art naturally and it’s good that I was able to recognize that painting was what I wanted to do. However I do have to say that I was quite committed to seeing my ideas through and it’s about having the drive to be able to focus rather than relying on creativity.

Are the drawings preliminary sketches for later paintings, or are they present as their own? Do you incorporate collage into the paintings at all?

Drawings are the place where ideas really can be realized quite fast because of the small scale.  I don’t usually do an exact copy of a drawing; rather I take elements out of the drawing and use them in the painting.  I do a lot of drawing in-between painting.  I have incorporated collage into the paintings a few times and it’s something I experiment with.

How did your individual series (“Landscape and Alchemy”, “Urban Myths”, “Mexican Folk/Day of the Dead”) come about?

At the time of Urban Myth series (2004 – 2007) I was looking at non-fiction books on man and machines and on the post-human. I also looked at other artists who incorporated technology into the body as part of their work.  It had a lot to do with my own feelings towards adapting to a new world or to a world dominated by machines.

With the Mexican Folk series (2008-2010) I was looking at comic books as well as images from Mexican craft.  I liked the way that Mexican folk is intertwined with spiritual and ritualistic beliefs particularly with the masks.  I looked at some of the older masks which seemed more genuine compared to the newer ones that seemed more decorative or mass produced. They were interesting to me because they were quite crude in the way they were made and each one was slightly different.  These masks really do have a magic about them and I started to think about the belief, energy or spirit that a person puts into something when they make it. I tried to explore this in the work and as a result those paintings have a sense of fantasy. 
 They also intermingled with some of the geometric structures from the previous series so in that way I think the series usually lead into each other. The Landscapes and Alchemy (2011) paintings are something I did while reading books on Alchemy, following on from reading books on psychology and Jung.  I was interested in the relationship that the alchemists saw between spirit, matter and soul. The Alchemists were interested in the purification of the soul that is experienced through the many phases and stages of what they call calcification, putrefaction and purification.  I liked the idea of hermetic secrets or a secret knowledge and used vessels, animals, scrolls, nature, the earth and other symbols of alchemy to explore this in the paintings. An interesting book on this subject is “What Painting Is” (James Elkins) which talks about the painting process itself being a form of Alchemy. 

Your color work in the “Mexican Folk Series” is vibrant and electric. You have interpreted the actual Day of the Dead symbols with a strong understanding of why those figures and masks are so magnetic to anyone viewing them, even in the face of its subject. You also have captured the true sense of humor, the “laughing at death” quality inherent in so much of this imagery. Can you speak more of your own experiences with these cultural celebrations?

Those paintings to me seem loaded with possibilities, there is a lot going on and my understanding of those paintings is still developing further.  I looked at two types of usage of the skull, one being used in The Day of the Dead figurines/masks, which is a type of decorative craft showing skulls smiling and laughing.  Then there is the more political usage of the skull in the illustrations of Jose Guadalupe Posada, his skulls are also smiling although they seem more like a grimace as they endure hardship and poverty.  It is this grin that sets the Day of the Dead skulls apart from other skulls found in popular culture.  When researched further you will find that the Day of the Dead rituals run deep throughout Mexico and the modern craft versions of the celebration only hint at it’s original meaning which was closely connected to the indigenous people of Mexico and is a form of ancestor worship or the worship of an Aztec god.  The reproductions of Day of the Dead imagery and craft are popular not only because of what they represent but because they are cute and cheerful. However part of its potency and magnetism really does lie in the deep rooted meaning but I doubt that anyone really understands the Day of the Dead to the extent that it was once understood.  I see the Day of the Dead celebrations not only as a celebration of the life/death cycle but also a celebration of the rich history that it represents and it is good to see that it is kept alive through the rituals and traditions practiced in Mexico today. You could say that there is a light hearted cynicism that sneaks into my paintings and it has something to do with sense of sadness as the Day of the Dead passes over into the realms of popular culture as it becomes more and more watered down and filtered through to other parts of the world.  So in a way the Day of the Dead is facing its own death.

Two of my favorites from the Mexican series are “The Boxing Match”, with its main figure philosophically viewing a smaller “painting” of two boxers with a full-masted ship behind them; and “Happy Death Mask”, with its flowered mirror and subject. The portrait is a major focus for you in many of these works. Can you speak more to this?

I think the portrait in these paintings really is about self-reflection but not necessarily a reflection only of the artist. The Boxing Match could be seen as a person looking over their life and reflecting. Perhaps it is a way of looking back at your life in advance to see if you will be happy with it at the end, the ship is a symbol of living your dreams, sailing the world or seeing the world. There is a boxing match going on in front of the ship, these figures could be seen as archetypes, the hero will win and get to sail the world. My interpretations change often but the Boxing Match is one that I had up on my wall for a while so I looked at it a lot.

 

How have other native cultures inspired and informed your work?

Recently I’ve been referring to the figures in my work as “exotic” because the one thing that ties these together through the different series is the sense that they are from another place or another time or that they are foreign in some way or another. 

Your paintings involve human, animal, and spiritual connections to inner personal landscapes. You have a contemporary eye for the urban, yet you fully engage the pastoral and magical in your imagery. Why are these objects so potent for you?

Some of the landscapes are inspired by places I’ve visited or lived in personally but I am also influenced by Western films or landscapes I see in films that I’ve never visited. I like the idea of man alone with the land, the barrenness, vulnerability and the indifference of nature but also the overwhelming beauty and power of those types of landscapes.  I often reference the paintings of Sidney Nolan but I’ve also been looking at David Harrison recently who also engages with the pastoral in his work in a more enchanted way.

It’s essential to me as a human to reconnect with nature on a regular basis and that is where I perceive there to be a spiritual connection.  Magic is something that exists on a certain level if you want to see it and I think it’s good to welcome it into a painting.  The work of the painter Leonora Carrington explores this quite successfully, however, I like to allow it to sneak into my work but I don’t want it to go as far as becoming solely about the spiritual.

Did you have mentors during your academic study that were significant to your development and personal vision?

Yes. I also find that staying informed and having contact with other artists to be crucial to my development as a painter. 

What are some of the challenges you face as you create new work?

Painting is a messy process and you really have to get involved and be prepared to get frustrated and annoyed but also surprised and challenged and I try to incorporate all of this into the work.  Whatever I do with painting I like to keep it moving and stay excited about the work.

What are you currently developing?

I’ll be showing some of my new work in February at an Artist run gallery in London called Transition.  The show is called Needle’s Eye and will show the work of four local artists.

ALL IMAGES COPYRIGHT LISA MCKENDRICK, 2012. Reproduced with the kind permission of the artist.  IMAGES, Top to bottom: "Figure and Car"; "Woman In A Landscape"; Urban Myth, Part 7"; "Urban Myth, Part 3"; "Man's Best Friend"; "Drawing, No. 17"; "Happy Death Mask"; "Boxing Match"'; "Mexican Puppets"; "I Used To Be A Landscape".