Medrie MacPhee, If You Get There, 2021
Medrie MacPhee is a senior Canadian painter based in New York. Her innovative approach to space, colour and form is widely admired and respected in both Canada and abroad. Over the years, her work has evolved from architectural landscapes to abstraction, with the concepts of construction, momentum, collapse and renewal remaining central to her practice. Recently, a significant shift in MacPhee's process occurred when she began adhering ordinary materials — clothing, zippers, buttons and fabric — to her canvases. The resulting chromatic patterns she creates using this framework are entirely abstract and yet reference their origins in the subtle presence of human-body derived shapes and contours.
MacPhee is also widely recognized for her works on paper, combinations of abstract motifs that create a unique visual language. Her current works are collages composed of acrylic transfer, pumice, transparent velum and oil stick.
MacPhee was born in Edmonton, Alberta, and has resided in New York City since 1976. She received a B.F.A. from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Her work has been exhibited in over thirty solo and seventy group exhibitions, in Canada, the U.S. and Europe. MacPhee is represented in many private and public collections in Canada, the U.S. and Europe including the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; the Edmonton Art Gallery; the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and the Asheville Art Museum, NC. MacPhee is a recipient of American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize Awards, a Pollack-Krasner Award and a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. MacPhee was the Sherri Burt Hennessey Artist in Residence at Bard College, New York from 1997 - 2021.
MacPhee was born in Edmonton, Alberta, and has resided in New York City since 1976. She received a B.F.A. from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Her work has been exhibited in over thirty solo and seventy group exhibitions, in Canada, the U.S. and Europe. MacPhee is represented in many private and public collections in Canada, the U.S. and Europe including the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; the Edmonton Art Gallery; the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and the Asheville Art Museum, NC. MacPhee is a recipient of American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize Awards, a Pollack-Krasner Award and a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. MacPhee was the Sherri Burt Hennessey Artist in Residence at Bard College, New York from 1997 - 2021.