Elizabeth Magill

Elizabeth Magill's distinctive paintings offer subjective and psychological interpretations of the landscape genre.

Biography of Elizabeth Magill

Elizabeth Magill was born in 1959 in Canada and raised in Northern Ireland. She pursued her education in fine arts, earning a Fine Art Degree in Painting from Belfast College of Art in 1982. She furthered her studies with an MA in Painting from the Slade School of Art, UCL London, completed in 1984.

During her career, she participated in various residencies, including:

• Momart Fellowship, Tate Gallery, Liverpool (1994);
• Saarlandisches Kunstlerhaus, Saarbruken, Germany (1995);
• Sirius Project, Cobh, Cork (1999);
• The British Embassy, Yangon, Myanmar (2002);
• Scuola International di Grafica, Venice (2008).

In 1983, Elizabeth Magill received the GPA Award from the Douglas Hyde Gallery and the Alice Berger Hammerschlag Award from the Arts Council of N. Ireland. Her other awards include the Sunny Dupree Award at the Royal Academy Summer Show in London (2011) and the Painting Prize at the Royal Ulster Academy, Ulster Museum in Belfast (2014).

Recent solo exhibitions of Magill's works include "By This River" at Annelly Juda Fine Art in London (2023), "Flag Iris" at Miles McEnery Gallery in New York (2022), "Red Stars and Variations" at Kerlin Gallery in Dublin (2021), and "Her Nature" at Kerlin Gallery in Dublin (2020). 

Currently, the artist lives and works in London, UK and County Antrim, Ireland

Elizabeth Magill's Art Style

Elizabeth Magill's paintings are characterized by their subjective and psychological interpretations of landscapes. Described by critic Isobel Haribson as "epic, enigmatic and evocative," her works often depict rural settings on the outskirts of settlements. These scenes are transformed through her imagination, memories, photographs, and moods, resulting in visionary recollections of natural elements like hills, lakes, hedges, and skies infused with ambient light.

Her paintings are not based on direct observation but are imbued with a sense of interiority and reflection, earning the term 'inscape' to describe her practice. Magill's works, while possessing a cinematic beauty, can also evoke eerie or unsettling feelings. Elements like trees, telephone wires, silhouetted birds, and rare, distant human figures contribute to this atmosphere. Her color palette ranges from subdued to occasionally toxic tones.

Magill employs a variety of techniques in her complex and densely layered paintings. These include stencilling, screenprinting, collage, and the dynamic application and removal of paint through pouring, blending, dripping, splashing, and scraping. Film and photography play a central role in her research, influencing her approach to light, tone, and atmosphere, and shaping the way she views and represents landscapes.