Shona Macdonald – Sky on Ground – 60×72 – Oil on canvas – 2014
(NORTH ADAMS, Mass.) — Uncanny Valley, a show of innovative works on paper and paintings by New England-based artist Shona Macdonald, opens at Independent Art Projects on Saturday, February 28, 2015, with a reception from 3 to 5pm. The exhibition, presented by CYNTHIA-REEVES, runs through March 29.
Uncanny Valley is a new series developed from 2013 to 2015 that explores how human intervention interrupts the landscape. Macdonald deciphers those interruptions in illustrative and figural forms: tarps covering over-wintered plants, reflectors resembling eyes, hay bales becoming teeth.
Viewing the landscape for its cultural, rather than organic, geography was first explored by American writer J. B. Jackson, (1909 – 1996), who also coined the phrase “vernacular landscape.” Macdonald seeks to visually depict the cultural geography that Jackson references and, specifically, the place where she resides, New England.
The artist comments, “Sometimes the places I depict are melancholic and soulless, other times they are droll. Part of how viewers can identify with these places is a sense of having been there before, or seeing something we have seen before. I want to show them back to the viewer: to represent them as a way to establish a sense of belonging.”
Shona Macdonald
Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, Shona Macdonald received a Masters in Fine Art at the University of Illinois, Chicago in 1996, and a Bachelors of Fine Art from the Glasgow School of Art, Scotland in 1992. An Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director of Studio Arts at the University of Massachusetts, Macdonald has been a Visiting Artist at over forty institutions, including Wimbledon College of Art, London, (1998), Georgia State University, Atlanta, (2007), Cornell University (2006), the University of Alberta, and the University of Calgary, Canada, (2002). A grant recipient from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, NY, (2009), along with fellowships at the Roswell Artist-in-Residence in Roswell, New Mexico, (2010-11), Can Serrat, Barcelona, Spain, (2012), and the Cromarty Arts Trust in Scotland, her work has been featured in Art in America, Art News, the LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times, and New American Paintings.
Independent Art Project is open on Saturdays and by appointment.