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​​​Bookkeepers and the Blue Mine.



Kathryn Madill

The circle of life and death and the desperate sadness of loss are recurring themes in the practise of Kathryn Madill
The five paintings in Bookkeepers and the Blue Mine reveal the haunting beauty of the land, sky and sea and the fragility of human beings in an eternal landscape. The notion of being on a journey is central to the work. Judith Laube 2024

Kathryn Madill, Bookkeepers, oil on gesso board, 2024.

Kathryn Madill, Sophie and Edvard Munch, oil on gesso board, 2024.

Kathryn Madill, Bookkeepers ll, oil on gesso board, 2024.

Kathryn Madill, The Blue Mine, oil on gesso board, 2024.

Kathryn Madill, The Blue Mine ll, oil on gesso board, 2024.

Kathryn Madill, Untitled, oil on gesso board, 2024.

​"...figures follow one another among darkened landscapes. These internal interactions create a depth to the world that the viewer can dip into, peering beneath their surfaces to draw an infinitum of conclusions...dream-like they mix a gorgeous dread with a quivering and alive darkness."  Cameron Ralston

"Bookkeepers and the Blue Mine", Kathryn Madill

There are also two distinct series in Kathryn Madill’s exhibition at Olga, despite this being a relatively small exhibition. The exhibition’s title, "Bookkeepers and the Blue Mine" reflect these two series.
Madill’s paintings create a dream landscape inhabited by emotion and memory. Stormy skies sit above an infinite Limbo. There is a sense that time has stopped, and that any events which may occur will be expunged from history, leaving only the haunted memories of those involved.
The Blue Mine works, and an accompanying untitled piece, give evidence that this world is not as it might appear on the surface. Half lake, half rift in the universe, an ultramarine hole sits at the centre of these images, watched by enigmatic figures, one of them starkly, phantasmically white. In one disturbing work, the painter Edvard Munch walks with his dead sister near the edge of the mine, suggesting the idea (which recurs in Madill’s work) that there is a journey and a continuum between life and death on display.
If anything, the Bookkeeper works feel even more personal than the Blue Mine pieces. Generations of figures walk the same non-land, clutching books tightly to their chests as if they are the only traces of memory or property that they retain, guarded as they are passed down through the years.
 James Dignan Otago Daily Times 3 October 2024