Looking intently at the surface of one of Michelle Mackey’s abstract landscapes, the viewer may find portals leading into the earth itself, feel the unseen forces churning beneath, and trace the unfolding story of the land stretched over the geologic time scale. Mackey’s growing interest in geology and “deep time,” bolstered by a journey to Iceland and an arts residency in Wyoming, is fully evident in her latest body of work, which draws inspiration from Enchanted Rock, the fabled pink granite dome in the Texas Hill Country.
As her interest in exploring the idea of geologic time grew, Mackey had a desire to locate it here in Texas. She kept returning to Enchanted Rock. “It’s this oddball batholith in the middle of Central Texas. I felt this was a good locator for me for all the thoughts I’ve been working on in my mind, a specific place to talk about the larger abstractions.” A geological phenomenon of monumental proportions, the largest batholith in Texas was created over a billion years ago when molten magma cooled into granite far beneath the earth’s surface, then was gradually exposed and shaped through uplifting, erosion, and exfoliation.
The constant tension inherent in geology is also an essential element in Mackey’s painting process. “I’m an abstract painter using landscape imagery. I’m staying in between what I can believe, something I have perceived in nature, and the kind of abstraction that speaks to unseen forces from gravity to time.” She seeks to make visible both the past and the present, and perhaps the future as well, in her paintings. “On the human scale we perceive landscapes as very still or peaceful,” says Mackey, “but it’s also true there are multiple shifts happening and I want that reality to be present in the paintings as well.” How does she realize these abstract ideas in a physical language like paint?
Sometimes Mackey intentionally obliterates most of the recognizable imagery in the landscape. In Tilt, there are lines of formation that read as outlines of ghost images of rocks. One senses a facet of a rock face hit by reflective light or traces of a buried rock shape being pulled into the foreground. “These forms are flickering in and out of existence,” observes Mackey. “I’m talking about collapsing a long time period onto this one surface.” The clouds in this painting look both ephemeral and more solid than they should. “We think of clouds as temporary,” says Mackey. “Could I render them like traces of themselves or be more solid like a chunk of rock or a fossil? How do I make the traces in the sky seem monumental as they are dissolving?” Mackey is playing with tension again, between motion and stillness, formation and deformation.
The visible alchemical changes activated on the large-scale canvas of Imbued overwhelm the senses with its variety of textures, richness of colors, and the complex play of layers. “In nature, so many things act on you at once. You’ll notice the colors in one moment, feel the breeze in the next moment, and notice you are blinded by the sun in another. Your memory is also a part of it. I’m thinking about how to present such a full palette and organize it like we do our experiences.” Sometimes Mackey wipes out something or buries it underneath another layer. Sometimes she puts a thinner layer on top of a thicker one to create resistance. Sometimes she uses a glazing liquid or spray to create passages of semi-gloss or high sheen. Mackey believes painting is a good medium for expressing the unfolding of multiple time periods at once. “It takes the marks of the history of your past decisions and past colors and records them. Even if you wipe them away there’s still a residue.” The build-up of layers in painting mirrors the formation of layers of rocks in geologic time.
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Michelle Mackey, Tilt, vinyl and acrylic paint on canvas, 22 x 30” 2022. Photo courtesy of Todora Photography.
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Michelle Mackey, Uplift, vinyl and acrylic paint on canvas, 22 x 30” 2022. Photo courtesy of Todora Photography.
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Michelle Mackey, Ember, vinyl and acrylic paint on canvas, 43 x 72” 2022. Photo courtesy of Todora Photography.
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Michelle Mackey, Imbued, vinyl and acrylic paint on canvas, 43 x 72” 2022. Photo courtesy of Todora Photography.
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Michelle Mackey, Evenfall, vinyl and acrylic paint on wooden panel, 11 x 22” 2022. Photo courtesy of Todora Photography.
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Michelle Mackey, Evanescent, vinyl and acrylic paint on canvas, 26 x 20” 2022. Photo courtesy of Todora Photography.
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Michelle Mackey, Radiance, vinyl and acrylic paint on canvas, 28 x 22” 2022. Photo courtesy of Todora Photography.
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Michelle Mackey, Repose, vinyl and acrylic paint on canvas wrapped on wooden panel, 31 x 71” 2022. Photo courtesy of Todora Photography.
In Repose the juxtaposition of the muted quietness on top of the dome and the rapid, almost liquid motion in the foreground (in deep magenta) seems inexplicable at first glance. It references the exfoliation that occurs when the natural heating and cooling processes cause the granite to flake off in curving layers. The rocks littered around the edges of the batholith are a by-product of this phenomenon. Mackey describes her depiction of these rocks as suggestive of “almost humorous cutouts.” Their angularity is exaggerated. “Some of the shapes are jarring looking, like they don’t all fuse into this one smooth bucolic landscape,” she adds. “They are pieces from multiple time frames.”
Radiance reads like an abstraction of elements, with white, pink, and yellow swaths forcefully intruding the space in diagonal motion. Evenfall glows quietly in the distant gloaming. Several smaller works explore the theme of geologic time from various perspectives as potently as the larger works in the exhibition.
Mackey doesn’t often use earth tones in her landscapes because she wants the viewer to sense something off-kilter or otherworldly about them. Her colors are heightened, intense, fluorescent. They glow and shimmer with a radiant sheen, sometimes soft, sometimes metallic.
Mackey has succeeded in revealing the essence of Enchanted Rock, beyond the facts and numbers, beyond measure. These works invite viewers to look deeply, to experience the mystery, to alter one’s perception. Mackey likes to surprise herself and the viewer in her works. I asked her what surprised her about this body of work. “The glow is the first thing that surprised me,” muses Mackey. “Instead of articulating shapes by the edge, the glow is starting to articulate for me. It represents what is beyond me, any of those forces that are larger and more powerful than me.”
—SHERRY CHENG
