TURNER GALLERIES... 2018 EXHIBITIONS

www.sinemacpherson.com
william yeoman, marvel at masterful musings the west australian, 7 july 2018

Finding Colour, by local artist SinÉ MacPherson, is a selection of paintings from the past twenty years developed from a range of unique and systematic frames of reference, each revealing inherent structures from their underlying sources, explored through the materiality of paint.

MacPherson's interests lie in colour, the descriptions of natural phenomena and visual systems. All of her sources are everyday 'already mades', such as painted objects, books, dictionaries, field guides, newspapers, photographs '- systems, images, and objects in her environment that generally have some relationship to colour. For example, several years ago MacPherson started circling the colour words in her old Pocket Oxford Dictionary [POD], but at the time there was no gold or silver paint available, and she was unsure how to create a painting from words. Then two things happened around the same time, the paint became available and she replaced her POD with a newer, much fatter, Australian version. She went on to read six PODs, and devised a system to paint all the colour words she found. She mused,
"The sources of my paintings aren't meant to be obscure and usually the source is in the title or at least the title alludes to the source. Lexical Spectrum POD is the first of a series of six paintings. The series was poetically titled by a friend. I probably would have titled it All the Colour Words in the Pocket Oxford Dictionary".

From dictionaries MacPherson went on to explore other reference books in her library, and has since made paintings from colour descriptions found in a number of different field guides. The painting Shark Colours was created from information found in a Department of Fisheries publication, resulting in an abstract painting of shimmering blocks of grey shades.

Siné MacPherson was born in Canada, where she studied Fine Arts at the University of Saskatchewan and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. In Australia she has exhibited widely, and has been included in several important local group exhibitions, such as Luminous World - Contemporary Art from the Wesfarmers Collection, Art Gallery of WA, (national tour to 2014) and remix wa contemporary art, Art Gallery of WA, in 2011, and Systems of Nature, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, UWA. Her paintings can be found in the collections of Wesfarmers, Art Gallery of WA, Parliament House, and the Cruthers Collection.

shark colours oil on canvas 66 x 200cm 2011 $12,000
APOD defragmented oil on canvas 183 x 134cm 2008 $16,000	COPD defragmented oil on canvas 183 x 129cm 2008 $16,000
SAPOD defragmented oil on canvas 183 x 120cm 2008 $16,000	lexicon spectrum POD oil on canvas 183 x 112cm 2002 $20,000 sold to city of swan
folded flat oil on factory painted canvas on galvanised steel folding chair frame 70 x 46 x 8cm + 75 x 55cm 2003 $3,000
another apron diptych oil on linen [x2], wooden box, folded painting apron, glass 105.5 x 76cm + 26 x 30 x 5cm 1998 $10,000 sold to the art gallery of WA
egg colours defragmented oil on canvas 92.5 x 73cm 2010 $5,000 sold	evolution orchard oil on canvas 150x x125cm 2009 $14,000
venetian black oil on canvas 55 x 77cm 2009 $8,000