Diane Magee’s previous body of work, Winterage, had the seasonal movement of animals at its heart. This show, Blaze, has shifted the focus to unseasonal movement, and its unnatural, almost supernatural impact on a freshly-imagined plane.
In Blaze, the Burren cows of earlier have bolted, and that weatherbeaten landscape has gone with them. Natural cycles, and the known world, are painted over with the flames of climate breakdown.
The theme of the work isn’t in your face. At a first take, it doesn’t even feel that sinister — there are familiar landscapes with their comforting greys and greens. Squint and the coloured pieces might seem almost uplifting, like the Japanese woodblock print feel of Flotsam. Except, everything here is ablaze.
The obvious panic in The Highline and Blaze catches and spreads across the series when viewed together. The stag in Moorland isn’t standing proud on a foggy rock — that murk is smoke, the ferns are molten wildfire. Throughout the paintings clouds are conflagration, rock is ash, and the animals have broken the glass. Deer, dogs and birds, lots of birds, are the lost characters. Escaping talons poke through smoke, dogs are screaming whatever the dog is for fire. Each plays a canary in this coalmine.
For such dark thoughts there is so much colour. The paintings were well underway before the LA fires in January but that event, and its newborn urban wastelands, have scorched their way into some of the work.
Blaze is still tethered to Diane’s previous work, with similar structures and brushstrokes, but she has now moved full-time inside her own head. Trapped wildlife and harrowed pets have replaced roaming livestock in a landscape suddenly more imagined than remembered, but unfortunately all too familiar.
