Landon Mackenzie: Hummingbird

The exhibition features the latest works in Landon Mackenzie's ongoing practice and features paintings from her Hummingbird and The Rooms series. These large-format paintings begin on the floor of her studio with layers of gesso and drips of acrylic paint. As the layers build up she gradually picks up on the naturally emerging patterns that influence the next steps in her process. Half way done, she continues upright on large stretchers. Time is an essential element in her practice and alternating intuition with intellect has always been her trademark method. While her explorations in geometry or history have guided previous series, these latest bodies of work result from a more specific inspiration, the energetic movements and migrations of the hummingbird.

Mackenzie associates the hypnotic patterns formed by her colourful ‘particles’ to the fluttering and darting movements of the birds. Hummingbirds are driven by an intense attraction to colour and migrate by instinct that is guided by the number of hours of sunlight in a day and their internal biological calendar. When standing in front of her expansive paintings, distinct forest green or navy pathways start to emerge from a sea of pinks or yellows, evoking a flight path for the tiny birds. Mackenzie draws the viewer into her immersive and colourful worlds, as though we have adopted the point of view of the hummingbird.

Integral to Mackenzie’s practice as well are her accomplished works on paper. Exhibited alongside her large-scale paintings, they demonstrate her remarkable sensitivity to layering paint as well as nuance with colour. 

Two additional paintings are from the concurrent series called The Rooms, that show a number of circles traced from ordinary objects that appear to move around in a shallow space that could be experienced as moving in front of a flat wall or in a room. Her titles draw on references to art history and nod to artists that are influential touchstones to her generation. Blue Room, takes its title from one of the first paintings in Picasso’s Blue Period (The Blue Room, 1901). The white speckled circles within a veil of blue paint, appear to “spin or move like cells”. Lavender Mist (After Pollock) is an ethereal painting where circles ranging in scale seem to float over the surface. For Mackenzie, the words “Lavender” and “Mist” evoke notions of colour, scent, and atmosphere.