Alan Macdonald’s portraits contrast 17 century oil painting with modern brands, making for an interesting societal juxtaposition.
These paintings leaves you with the haunting feeling that something isn’t quite right about modern living.
In the same way many artists today question modern lifestyles and our connection with the natural world, or rather lack of connectedness with nature, Macdonald’s portraits encourage viewers to search for a hidden truth, a hidden layer of meaning within the faces and lines of the people and landscapes he paints.
His figures look spiritually searching, grey eyed and dreaming, and bare resemblance to the master of portraits, like Rembrandt or Frans Hals paintings. Each portrait and landscape is accompanied by words, even dictionary definitions, as if language can sense of the mystery surrounding the scenes.
Macdonald’s paintings are beautifully crafted and offer fun scenarios with a sharp commentary on human consumption, human history and the human condition, leaving viewers with a dark and unsettling nerve.
Have we lost ourselves in Walker’s crisp?
We follow through the a,b,c, trying to piece together the jigsaw, but language proves as fallible as any system by which we structure our existence, and we are left with a series of miswired lexical circuits.
Is a landscape "an area of land regarded as being visually distinct," or is it "a painting, drawing, photograph etc. depicting natural scenery?" Macdonald lets both definitions stand.
Words by Jane Burton.
(alanmacdonald.net)
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