Landon Mackenzie: Parallel Journey: Works on Paper (1975-2015)

Landon Mackenzie is a nationally-known Canadian artist, admired for her large-scale works using paint on canvas. Less widely known are her works on paper, which she produces voluminously as a tandem practice to her big paintings, often while travelling.

This show takes the viewer on a journey through the past four decades of Mackenzie’s art production on paper, beginning with a watercolour the artist painted when she was 14 years old, and ending in the year 2015. The first bodies of work presented are the artist’s conceptually-oriented black-and-white etchings made while studying first at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (1972-1976), then at Montreal’s Concordia University (1976-1979). These are followed by vibrantly colourful Four Folding Paintings (1978-1979). Next is an installation of small watercolours featuring her oval compositional device from the 1990s. Finally, are selections of works created in Berlin (2007 and 2013), in Paris (2009), and abstract images in watercolour and inks created in Banff, Prince Edward Island, and Vancouver.

Mackenzie’s strengths as an artist are her inventive energy, her intellectual restlessness and curiosity, her love of imagery, maps, language and history. She harnesses her mind, emotions, body and spirit to have all systems working in tandem and firing with precision and grace. Her work is embodied, informed, poetic, expressive, and completely her own.

Parallel Journey is curated by Liz Wylie and organized by the Kelowna Art Gallery.