— dissociation

the book of disquiet by fernando pessoa // a breath of life by clarice lispector // againts the mass of the night by kaye donachie // how to dissapear completely by radiohead // normal people by sally rooney // rené magritte // virgina woolf // by me // enrico robusti

portrait of my boyfriend that I did based on this kaye donachie painting.

Kaye Donachie (@kayedonachie)

Silence Sings

Oil on linen

I’M NOT ENTIRELY HERE

boygenius // kaye donachie // holly warburton // virginia woolf // jovialtorchlight // richard ayoade // anne sexton

#For My Brother Alex

Kaye Donachie (British, b. 1970), Tent, 1999. Oil on board, 45.5 x 66 cm.

Kaye Donachie (British, b. 1970), SQUEAKY (EYES OF A DREAMER), 2004. Oil on canvas, 59.5 x 46 cm

LOVE AND WATER - mahmoud darwish / kaye donachie / ocean vuong / anne michaels / phoebe bridgers / patrick mccormack / patti smith

Blue in art

Jules de Balincourt//When the Night Falls, Miren Asiain Lora//Jing Zhiyong//Rae Kolarova//Holly Warburton//Study, gouache on paper, 9”x12”, 2022 by Aron Wiesenfeld//The death of Ophelia, Marco Ortolan//Kaye Donachie//Charlotte Ager

LIFE IMITATES ART [1/?]

against the mass of night (kaye donachie, 2013) | charles leclerc (bryn lennon, 2022 italian grand prix)

Kaye Donachie

Kaye Donachie, Glaze of Desire, 2017

Kaye Donachie (@kayedonachie)

Perishable Songs

Oil on linen

Kaye Donachie

Kaye Donachie is a contemporary Scottish painter best known for her muted, figurative paintings. Throughout her oeuvre, she explores the history of counter cultures, domesticity, and utopian ideals, often choosing to focus on female figures and leaders. Donachie will sometimes superimpose landscapes over or within portraits that depict the sermons of cult leaders, forming tableaus that are at once mysterious and deeply evocative. “In the paintings, the character and the description of time and place drift between dream and reality, as the day passes into night,” the artist has said. “The paintings and drawings are structured like pages from a book but the play or script denies any linear narrative seeking to express evocative moments in time.” Donachie’s imagery brings to mind the psychedelia of contemporaries like Peter Doig, while the subtle tonal palette recalls Luc Tuymans. 

Kaye Donachie’s paintings pay tribute to a cast of historical female figures. Modernist performers, futurist actresses and non-conformist poets become protagonists connected by their unconventional beliefs and preferences. The paintings recognise the allure of these individuals and the extent to which they have stimulated Donachie to illuminate their specific histories, posing questions such as what it is to be present, to be active, to have a voice, and to assume ultimately, some measure of control over creative and emotional labour. 

Donachie revisits people and places that acted as a magnet for the convergence of ideas and experiments in avant-garde aesthetics and living. Her paintings use portraiture and landscape to figure reformist philosophies and weave a feminine counter narrative.

-exhibition in Lismore castle arts

For Lismore, Donachie has created a new body of work ‘Into the Thousand Mirrors’ which figures the extraordinary character of Maria Lani. In 1928 Lani arrived in Paris and introduced herself as a silent film actress, inspiring Thomas Mann to co -author a film script called ‘The Woman of the Hundred Faces’. The scenario required multiple artistic representations of the same model. The works were made by Man Ray, Matisse, Picabia, Delaunay and many other artists working at that time. The film never materialised, and Maria Lani disappeared, her life translating into fiction and subsequent exhibition by Cocteau in 1929. 

Donachie depicts a cast of alternative protagonists from the perspective of the model or sitter as they gaze in reverie and stare back at their surroundings and audience. Lani’s narrative and elusiveness, her ability to evade capture, are a stimulus for Donachie’s approach in conjuring historical and literary figures through painting. In Donachie’s paintings the subjects seem to dissolve into a haze as a result of her unique, light and concise touch, and her limited but subtle range of colours. A tonality often prevails through shades, hues and intensities of colour. Overlapping tonal planes and images bestow an enigmatic atmosphere upon her canvases. The interwoven temporal images also incorporate a cinematic dimension, opening up the sphere of possibilities to those viewing them. Although the human figure is central to her work, it is above all a pretext for the composition of a mental landscape where intense sensations emerge on the canvas.

Interview:

3 AM THOUGHTS

Jonah Calinawan, Rising / Edvard Munch, Evening on Karl Johan Street / Holly Warburton, A Face in the Crowd / Kaye Donachie, Exhibition at Maureen Paley / Edvard Munch, Melancholy / Excerpts: x, x, x, x, x, x.