Medrie MacPhee: The Edge of the Alphabet

Medrie MacPhee’s captivating new body of work, The Edge of the Alphabet, is a series of spirited and nuanced paintings on panel. Smaller in scale than previous works in this medium, they unfold like visual poems and evoke everything from musical compositions to landscapes - each work tells a unique story. MacPhee’s strong use of intuitive colour is underscored by her foundation of collaged clothing, a part of her process that quietly makes itself known over time. 

MacPhee aligns these recent works with painted objects rather than traditional two-dimensional paintings because of their prominent texture and relief. In some instances, she enhances the texture by infusing paint with pumice. The uniform scale and cohesiveness of The Edge of the Alphabet, encourages a semiotic reading, like a deck of tarot cards. It extends MacPhee’s ongoing interest in “words as complex objects, as forms that hold within them weight, structure, memory, emotion, and association,” as well as the realm beyond words that MacPhee has referred to as a “subterranean level of feeling.”