Artist Interview: Kaye Donachie's 'Nuanced Personal Choreography'
With Song for the Last Act showing now at Pallant House Gallery, we sat down with artist Kaye Donachie to discuss her process and inspirations...
June 5, 2023
You’ve called your portraits ‘vehicles for painting’; what does that mean to you?
Rather than make a portrait in a traditional sense of attempting to create a likeness, I prefer to re-imagine a cast of women, portraying them as actors, modernist performers, and non-conformist poets. This invention allows me to consider the face as an armature, a familiar structure that can support descriptive applications and passages of paint and allow figural and abstract gestures to be read simultaneously. I enjoy the visceral qualities of paint and the evocative painterly marks that can facilitate our emotional connections to an image.
You’ve previously said you’re interested in rereading the histories within works, and overlaying different works to tell altogether new histories. What part does collection (of literature, visual art) play in your artistic process?
Literature is very important to me; it lets me re-imagine or give a voice to my characters and sets a tone within the work. Poems and fragments of writing by avant-garde women direct how the works within a show can work as a tableau. I organise how I want the paintings to work together by using literature to introduce a sense of history and place. Each title is a line of poetry and acts as an echo of words, creating an abstract script that allows me to think of new imagery. The exhibition space will often dictate how a group of paintings will hang together as an elliptical poem. The texts and titles provide another layer, and this also allows me to expand my references.
You work from archive B/W photographs, but your works are shaded with muted colours. What does colour mean to you?
I collect a lot of information before starting a painting, from books and archival material, the majority of which is monochrome. The colour decisions I make in terms of whether to use an intense or muted palette comes from the immediate emotional reaction I may have towards an image and how I want it to be perceived. I use colour, tone and hue as emotional signifiers and these different emotional intensities enable me to direct the narrative in each work. I prefer to pre-mix colours, thinking about how they will resonate and to create an idea of the visionary. This allows the images to be ethereal projections or silent interfaces. I also associate colour as being evocative of a particular historical period and use this reference to create a sense of space. In my recent work, I think the colours are soft and quiet, which evokes a sense of distance.
There’s a stark contrast in the subjects and contexts of your works - which feature women with ‘strong sense of identity in their art and literature’, but ‘vague biographies’. What informs your selection?
I am very interested in stories and biographies of individuals who lived an aesthetic lifestyle and represented their aspirations through fashion and art, particularly in the early twentieth century. I am inspired by avant-garde women who contributed to art and culture but remain marginalised figures in history. These women such as Maria Lani or Iris Tree have a clear sense of identity, represented through their writing, art, or life as muses. Many times, I have often returned to Nusch Eluard and Lee Miller as subjects. For me, they redefined the role of the muse and the ideas they explored in their art. Their aesthetic vision reinforced the influence they have on my paintings.
Many of the women I refer to are liberated modern thinkers, but with sparse biographies they become somewhat fictionalised characters. This allows me to explore within the painting an interpretation of these narratives.
Thinking more specifically about the women I reference; I would say as protagonists that they have a clear sense of their identity through self-representation. I depict them as performers in an unknown narrative, but I also want them to possess an emotive energy. I hope to portray an intimate revising of these characters, redeeming and conversing with images through the sensual, eroticised, visceral quality of paint.
The artist Gwen John is currently on show in the rooms adjacent to yours; you’ve previously said that it is ‘irrelevant’ whether we first encounter women as models and muses, so long as we learn about their stories more widely. Do you consider your practice to be as much historically or politically as artistically motivated, or both?
Perhaps both, although I prefer to be not so prescriptive as to say I am motivated by any specific agenda. I have always been interested in our shared responses to archival images, our sense of time and our knowledge of historical events. My portraits are spectres, images conjured through art and writing that perhaps can be understood as a romantic appeal for another alternative aesthetic state.
Alongside your own exhibition, you present Chorus, a selection of works from the Pallant House collection, which includes the likes of Glyn Philpot, plus Duncan Grant and Paul Cezanne’s ‘Bathers’, curated in conversation. Do you think that artists engage with - or intervene in - collections differently to art historians or museum curators?
As an artist, I typically navigate my way through exhibitions by hopping between one object and another. I use an aesthetic interpretation to connect disparate ideas to the present and this allows the historical context to have a relevance and meaning within my own practice. I approached the Pallant House Collection with a similar perspective. I conceived my selection as an assemblage, choosing works that shared a charged intensity, focused by a desire to seize the interior lives of their subjects.
My curation is focused on creating a nuanced personal choreography, with an intention of allowing works to resonate and images sing. My selection at Pallant House was titled Song for the Last Act: Chorus; the idea of voices in unison, connecting to my solo show within the same venue. My selection could be considered a continuation of my curation of my solo show at Plateau, Frac Île-de-France, Paris in 2017. Amongst my own works, I included historical works by avant-garde women artists. The conversations between the works are apparent and visualise inspirational sources instead of academic comparisons. These opportunities are unique and allow me to share a moment of self-reflection, projecting an objective insight onto the images and histories I am drawn to.
Kaye Donachie lives and works in London. Her exhibition Song for the Last Act is on view at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester until 8 October 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
You’ve called your portraits ‘vehicles for painting’; what does that mean to you?
Rather than make a portrait in a traditional sense of attempting to create a likeness, I prefer to re-imagine a cast of women, portraying them as actors, modernist performers, and non-conformist poets. This invention allows me to consider the face as an armature, a familiar structure that can support descriptive applications and passages of paint and allow figural and abstract gestures to be read simultaneously. I enjoy the visceral qualities of paint and the evocative painterly marks that can facilitate our emotional connections to an image.
You’ve previously said you’re interested in rereading the histories within works, and overlaying different works to tell altogether new histories. What part does collection (of literature, visual art) play in your artistic process?
Literature is very important to me; it lets me re-imagine or give a voice to my characters and sets a tone within the work. Poems and fragments of writing by avant-garde women direct how the works within a show can work as a tableau. I organise how I want the paintings to work together by using literature to introduce a sense of history and place. Each title is a line of poetry and acts as an echo of words, creating an abstract script that allows me to think of new imagery. The exhibition space will often dictate how a group of paintings will hang together as an elliptical poem. The texts and titles provide another layer, and this also allows me to expand my references.
You work from archive B/W photographs, but your works are shaded with muted colours. What does colour mean to you?
I collect a lot of information before starting a painting, from books and archival material, the majority of which is monochrome. The colour decisions I make in terms of whether to use an intense or muted palette comes from the immediate emotional reaction I may have towards an image and how I want it to be perceived. I use colour, tone and hue as emotional signifiers and these different emotional intensities enable me to direct the narrative in each work. I prefer to pre-mix colours, thinking about how they will resonate and to create an idea of the visionary. This allows the images to be ethereal projections or silent interfaces. I also associate colour as being evocative of a particular historical period and use this reference to create a sense of space. In my recent work, I think the colours are soft and quiet, which evokes a sense of distance.
There’s a stark contrast in the subjects and contexts of your works - which feature women with ‘strong sense of identity in their art and literature’, but ‘vague biographies’. What informs your selection?
I am very interested in stories and biographies of individuals who lived an aesthetic lifestyle and represented their aspirations through fashion and art, particularly in the early twentieth century. I am inspired by avant-garde women who contributed to art and culture but remain marginalised figures in history. These women such as Maria Lani or Iris Tree have a clear sense of identity, represented through their writing, art, or life as muses. Many times, I have often returned to Nusch Eluard and Lee Miller as subjects. For me, they redefined the role of the muse and the ideas they explored in their art. Their aesthetic vision reinforced the influence they have on my paintings.
Many of the women I refer to are liberated modern thinkers, but with sparse biographies they become somewhat fictionalised characters. This allows me to explore within the painting an interpretation of these narratives.
Thinking more specifically about the women I reference; I would say as protagonists that they have a clear sense of their identity through self-representation. I depict them as performers in an unknown narrative, but I also want them to possess an emotive energy. I hope to portray an intimate revising of these characters, redeeming and conversing with images through the sensual, eroticised, visceral quality of paint.
The artist Gwen John is currently on show in the rooms adjacent to yours; you’ve previously said that it is ‘irrelevant’ whether we first encounter women as models and muses, so long as we learn about their stories more widely. Do you consider your practice to be as much historically or politically as artistically motivated, or both?
Perhaps both, although I prefer to be not so prescriptive as to say I am motivated by any specific agenda. I have always been interested in our shared responses to archival images, our sense of time and our knowledge of historical events. My portraits are spectres, images conjured through art and writing that perhaps can be understood as a romantic appeal for another alternative aesthetic state.
Alongside your own exhibition, you present Chorus, a selection of works from the Pallant House collection, which includes the likes of Glyn Philpot, plus Duncan Grant and Paul Cezanne’s ‘Bathers’, curated in conversation. Do you think that artists engage with - or intervene in - collections differently to art historians or museum curators?
As an artist, I typically navigate my way through exhibitions by hopping between one object and another. I use an aesthetic interpretation to connect disparate ideas to the present and this allows the historical context to have a relevance and meaning within my own practice. I approached the Pallant House Collection with a similar perspective. I conceived my selection as an assemblage, choosing works that shared a charged intensity, focused by a desire to seize the interior lives of their subjects.
My curation is focused on creating a nuanced personal choreography, with an intention of allowing works to resonate and images sing. My selection at Pallant House was titled Song for the Last Act: Chorus; the idea of voices in unison, connecting to my solo show within the same venue. My selection could be considered a continuation of my curation of my solo show at Plateau, Frac Île-de-France, Paris in 2017. Amongst my own works, I included historical works by avant-garde women artists. The conversations between the works are apparent and visualise inspirational sources instead of academic comparisons. These opportunities are unique and allow me to share a moment of self-reflection, projecting an objective insight onto the images and histories I am drawn to.
Kaye Donachie lives and works in London. Her exhibition Song for the Last Act is on view at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester until 8 October 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
You’ve called your portraits ‘vehicles for painting’; what does that mean to you?
Rather than make a portrait in a traditional sense of attempting to create a likeness, I prefer to re-imagine a cast of women, portraying them as actors, modernist performers, and non-conformist poets. This invention allows me to consider the face as an armature, a familiar structure that can support descriptive applications and passages of paint and allow figural and abstract gestures to be read simultaneously. I enjoy the visceral qualities of paint and the evocative painterly marks that can facilitate our emotional connections to an image.
You’ve previously said you’re interested in rereading the histories within works, and overlaying different works to tell altogether new histories. What part does collection (of literature, visual art) play in your artistic process?
Literature is very important to me; it lets me re-imagine or give a voice to my characters and sets a tone within the work. Poems and fragments of writing by avant-garde women direct how the works within a show can work as a tableau. I organise how I want the paintings to work together by using literature to introduce a sense of history and place. Each title is a line of poetry and acts as an echo of words, creating an abstract script that allows me to think of new imagery. The exhibition space will often dictate how a group of paintings will hang together as an elliptical poem. The texts and titles provide another layer, and this also allows me to expand my references.
You work from archive B/W photographs, but your works are shaded with muted colours. What does colour mean to you?
I collect a lot of information before starting a painting, from books and archival material, the majority of which is monochrome. The colour decisions I make in terms of whether to use an intense or muted palette comes from the immediate emotional reaction I may have towards an image and how I want it to be perceived. I use colour, tone and hue as emotional signifiers and these different emotional intensities enable me to direct the narrative in each work. I prefer to pre-mix colours, thinking about how they will resonate and to create an idea of the visionary. This allows the images to be ethereal projections or silent interfaces. I also associate colour as being evocative of a particular historical period and use this reference to create a sense of space. In my recent work, I think the colours are soft and quiet, which evokes a sense of distance.
There’s a stark contrast in the subjects and contexts of your works - which feature women with ‘strong sense of identity in their art and literature’, but ‘vague biographies’. What informs your selection?
I am very interested in stories and biographies of individuals who lived an aesthetic lifestyle and represented their aspirations through fashion and art, particularly in the early twentieth century. I am inspired by avant-garde women who contributed to art and culture but remain marginalised figures in history. These women such as Maria Lani or Iris Tree have a clear sense of identity, represented through their writing, art, or life as muses. Many times, I have often returned to Nusch Eluard and Lee Miller as subjects. For me, they redefined the role of the muse and the ideas they explored in their art. Their aesthetic vision reinforced the influence they have on my paintings.
Many of the women I refer to are liberated modern thinkers, but with sparse biographies they become somewhat fictionalised characters. This allows me to explore within the painting an interpretation of these narratives.
Thinking more specifically about the women I reference; I would say as protagonists that they have a clear sense of their identity through self-representation. I depict them as performers in an unknown narrative, but I also want them to possess an emotive energy. I hope to portray an intimate revising of these characters, redeeming and conversing with images through the sensual, eroticised, visceral quality of paint.
The artist Gwen John is currently on show in the rooms adjacent to yours; you’ve previously said that it is ‘irrelevant’ whether we first encounter women as models and muses, so long as we learn about their stories more widely. Do you consider your practice to be as much historically or politically as artistically motivated, or both?
Perhaps both, although I prefer to be not so prescriptive as to say I am motivated by any specific agenda. I have always been interested in our shared responses to archival images, our sense of time and our knowledge of historical events. My portraits are spectres, images conjured through art and writing that perhaps can be understood as a romantic appeal for another alternative aesthetic state.
Alongside your own exhibition, you present Chorus, a selection of works from the Pallant House collection, which includes the likes of Glyn Philpot, plus Duncan Grant and Paul Cezanne’s ‘Bathers’, curated in conversation. Do you think that artists engage with - or intervene in - collections differently to art historians or museum curators?
As an artist, I typically navigate my way through exhibitions by hopping between one object and another. I use an aesthetic interpretation to connect disparate ideas to the present and this allows the historical context to have a relevance and meaning within my own practice. I approached the Pallant House Collection with a similar perspective. I conceived my selection as an assemblage, choosing works that shared a charged intensity, focused by a desire to seize the interior lives of their subjects.
My curation is focused on creating a nuanced personal choreography, with an intention of allowing works to resonate and images sing. My selection at Pallant House was titled Song for the Last Act: Chorus; the idea of voices in unison, connecting to my solo show within the same venue. My selection could be considered a continuation of my curation of my solo show at Plateau, Frac Île-de-France, Paris in 2017. Amongst my own works, I included historical works by avant-garde women artists. The conversations between the works are apparent and visualise inspirational sources instead of academic comparisons. These opportunities are unique and allow me to share a moment of self-reflection, projecting an objective insight onto the images and histories I am drawn to.
Kaye Donachie lives and works in London. Her exhibition Song for the Last Act is on view at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester until 8 October 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
You’ve called your portraits ‘vehicles for painting’; what does that mean to you?
Rather than make a portrait in a traditional sense of attempting to create a likeness, I prefer to re-imagine a cast of women, portraying them as actors, modernist performers, and non-conformist poets. This invention allows me to consider the face as an armature, a familiar structure that can support descriptive applications and passages of paint and allow figural and abstract gestures to be read simultaneously. I enjoy the visceral qualities of paint and the evocative painterly marks that can facilitate our emotional connections to an image.
You’ve previously said you’re interested in rereading the histories within works, and overlaying different works to tell altogether new histories. What part does collection (of literature, visual art) play in your artistic process?
Literature is very important to me; it lets me re-imagine or give a voice to my characters and sets a tone within the work. Poems and fragments of writing by avant-garde women direct how the works within a show can work as a tableau. I organise how I want the paintings to work together by using literature to introduce a sense of history and place. Each title is a line of poetry and acts as an echo of words, creating an abstract script that allows me to think of new imagery. The exhibition space will often dictate how a group of paintings will hang together as an elliptical poem. The texts and titles provide another layer, and this also allows me to expand my references.
You work from archive B/W photographs, but your works are shaded with muted colours. What does colour mean to you?
I collect a lot of information before starting a painting, from books and archival material, the majority of which is monochrome. The colour decisions I make in terms of whether to use an intense or muted palette comes from the immediate emotional reaction I may have towards an image and how I want it to be perceived. I use colour, tone and hue as emotional signifiers and these different emotional intensities enable me to direct the narrative in each work. I prefer to pre-mix colours, thinking about how they will resonate and to create an idea of the visionary. This allows the images to be ethereal projections or silent interfaces. I also associate colour as being evocative of a particular historical period and use this reference to create a sense of space. In my recent work, I think the colours are soft and quiet, which evokes a sense of distance.
There’s a stark contrast in the subjects and contexts of your works - which feature women with ‘strong sense of identity in their art and literature’, but ‘vague biographies’. What informs your selection?
I am very interested in stories and biographies of individuals who lived an aesthetic lifestyle and represented their aspirations through fashion and art, particularly in the early twentieth century. I am inspired by avant-garde women who contributed to art and culture but remain marginalised figures in history. These women such as Maria Lani or Iris Tree have a clear sense of identity, represented through their writing, art, or life as muses. Many times, I have often returned to Nusch Eluard and Lee Miller as subjects. For me, they redefined the role of the muse and the ideas they explored in their art. Their aesthetic vision reinforced the influence they have on my paintings.
Many of the women I refer to are liberated modern thinkers, but with sparse biographies they become somewhat fictionalised characters. This allows me to explore within the painting an interpretation of these narratives.
Thinking more specifically about the women I reference; I would say as protagonists that they have a clear sense of their identity through self-representation. I depict them as performers in an unknown narrative, but I also want them to possess an emotive energy. I hope to portray an intimate revising of these characters, redeeming and conversing with images through the sensual, eroticised, visceral quality of paint.
The artist Gwen John is currently on show in the rooms adjacent to yours; you’ve previously said that it is ‘irrelevant’ whether we first encounter women as models and muses, so long as we learn about their stories more widely. Do you consider your practice to be as much historically or politically as artistically motivated, or both?
Perhaps both, although I prefer to be not so prescriptive as to say I am motivated by any specific agenda. I have always been interested in our shared responses to archival images, our sense of time and our knowledge of historical events. My portraits are spectres, images conjured through art and writing that perhaps can be understood as a romantic appeal for another alternative aesthetic state.
Alongside your own exhibition, you present Chorus, a selection of works from the Pallant House collection, which includes the likes of Glyn Philpot, plus Duncan Grant and Paul Cezanne’s ‘Bathers’, curated in conversation. Do you think that artists engage with - or intervene in - collections differently to art historians or museum curators?
As an artist, I typically navigate my way through exhibitions by hopping between one object and another. I use an aesthetic interpretation to connect disparate ideas to the present and this allows the historical context to have a relevance and meaning within my own practice. I approached the Pallant House Collection with a similar perspective. I conceived my selection as an assemblage, choosing works that shared a charged intensity, focused by a desire to seize the interior lives of their subjects.
My curation is focused on creating a nuanced personal choreography, with an intention of allowing works to resonate and images sing. My selection at Pallant House was titled Song for the Last Act: Chorus; the idea of voices in unison, connecting to my solo show within the same venue. My selection could be considered a continuation of my curation of my solo show at Plateau, Frac Île-de-France, Paris in 2017. Amongst my own works, I included historical works by avant-garde women artists. The conversations between the works are apparent and visualise inspirational sources instead of academic comparisons. These opportunities are unique and allow me to share a moment of self-reflection, projecting an objective insight onto the images and histories I am drawn to.
Kaye Donachie lives and works in London. Her exhibition Song for the Last Act is on view at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester until 8 October 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
You’ve called your portraits ‘vehicles for painting’; what does that mean to you?
Rather than make a portrait in a traditional sense of attempting to create a likeness, I prefer to re-imagine a cast of women, portraying them as actors, modernist performers, and non-conformist poets. This invention allows me to consider the face as an armature, a familiar structure that can support descriptive applications and passages of paint and allow figural and abstract gestures to be read simultaneously. I enjoy the visceral qualities of paint and the evocative painterly marks that can facilitate our emotional connections to an image.
You’ve previously said you’re interested in rereading the histories within works, and overlaying different works to tell altogether new histories. What part does collection (of literature, visual art) play in your artistic process?
Literature is very important to me; it lets me re-imagine or give a voice to my characters and sets a tone within the work. Poems and fragments of writing by avant-garde women direct how the works within a show can work as a tableau. I organise how I want the paintings to work together by using literature to introduce a sense of history and place. Each title is a line of poetry and acts as an echo of words, creating an abstract script that allows me to think of new imagery. The exhibition space will often dictate how a group of paintings will hang together as an elliptical poem. The texts and titles provide another layer, and this also allows me to expand my references.
You work from archive B/W photographs, but your works are shaded with muted colours. What does colour mean to you?
I collect a lot of information before starting a painting, from books and archival material, the majority of which is monochrome. The colour decisions I make in terms of whether to use an intense or muted palette comes from the immediate emotional reaction I may have towards an image and how I want it to be perceived. I use colour, tone and hue as emotional signifiers and these different emotional intensities enable me to direct the narrative in each work. I prefer to pre-mix colours, thinking about how they will resonate and to create an idea of the visionary. This allows the images to be ethereal projections or silent interfaces. I also associate colour as being evocative of a particular historical period and use this reference to create a sense of space. In my recent work, I think the colours are soft and quiet, which evokes a sense of distance.
There’s a stark contrast in the subjects and contexts of your works - which feature women with ‘strong sense of identity in their art and literature’, but ‘vague biographies’. What informs your selection?
I am very interested in stories and biographies of individuals who lived an aesthetic lifestyle and represented their aspirations through fashion and art, particularly in the early twentieth century. I am inspired by avant-garde women who contributed to art and culture but remain marginalised figures in history. These women such as Maria Lani or Iris Tree have a clear sense of identity, represented through their writing, art, or life as muses. Many times, I have often returned to Nusch Eluard and Lee Miller as subjects. For me, they redefined the role of the muse and the ideas they explored in their art. Their aesthetic vision reinforced the influence they have on my paintings.
Many of the women I refer to are liberated modern thinkers, but with sparse biographies they become somewhat fictionalised characters. This allows me to explore within the painting an interpretation of these narratives.
Thinking more specifically about the women I reference; I would say as protagonists that they have a clear sense of their identity through self-representation. I depict them as performers in an unknown narrative, but I also want them to possess an emotive energy. I hope to portray an intimate revising of these characters, redeeming and conversing with images through the sensual, eroticised, visceral quality of paint.
The artist Gwen John is currently on show in the rooms adjacent to yours; you’ve previously said that it is ‘irrelevant’ whether we first encounter women as models and muses, so long as we learn about their stories more widely. Do you consider your practice to be as much historically or politically as artistically motivated, or both?
Perhaps both, although I prefer to be not so prescriptive as to say I am motivated by any specific agenda. I have always been interested in our shared responses to archival images, our sense of time and our knowledge of historical events. My portraits are spectres, images conjured through art and writing that perhaps can be understood as a romantic appeal for another alternative aesthetic state.
Alongside your own exhibition, you present Chorus, a selection of works from the Pallant House collection, which includes the likes of Glyn Philpot, plus Duncan Grant and Paul Cezanne’s ‘Bathers’, curated in conversation. Do you think that artists engage with - or intervene in - collections differently to art historians or museum curators?
As an artist, I typically navigate my way through exhibitions by hopping between one object and another. I use an aesthetic interpretation to connect disparate ideas to the present and this allows the historical context to have a relevance and meaning within my own practice. I approached the Pallant House Collection with a similar perspective. I conceived my selection as an assemblage, choosing works that shared a charged intensity, focused by a desire to seize the interior lives of their subjects.
My curation is focused on creating a nuanced personal choreography, with an intention of allowing works to resonate and images sing. My selection at Pallant House was titled Song for the Last Act: Chorus; the idea of voices in unison, connecting to my solo show within the same venue. My selection could be considered a continuation of my curation of my solo show at Plateau, Frac Île-de-France, Paris in 2017. Amongst my own works, I included historical works by avant-garde women artists. The conversations between the works are apparent and visualise inspirational sources instead of academic comparisons. These opportunities are unique and allow me to share a moment of self-reflection, projecting an objective insight onto the images and histories I am drawn to.
Kaye Donachie lives and works in London. Her exhibition Song for the Last Act is on view at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester until 8 October 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
You’ve called your portraits ‘vehicles for painting’; what does that mean to you?
Rather than make a portrait in a traditional sense of attempting to create a likeness, I prefer to re-imagine a cast of women, portraying them as actors, modernist performers, and non-conformist poets. This invention allows me to consider the face as an armature, a familiar structure that can support descriptive applications and passages of paint and allow figural and abstract gestures to be read simultaneously. I enjoy the visceral qualities of paint and the evocative painterly marks that can facilitate our emotional connections to an image.
You’ve previously said you’re interested in rereading the histories within works, and overlaying different works to tell altogether new histories. What part does collection (of literature, visual art) play in your artistic process?
Literature is very important to me; it lets me re-imagine or give a voice to my characters and sets a tone within the work. Poems and fragments of writing by avant-garde women direct how the works within a show can work as a tableau. I organise how I want the paintings to work together by using literature to introduce a sense of history and place. Each title is a line of poetry and acts as an echo of words, creating an abstract script that allows me to think of new imagery. The exhibition space will often dictate how a group of paintings will hang together as an elliptical poem. The texts and titles provide another layer, and this also allows me to expand my references.
You work from archive B/W photographs, but your works are shaded with muted colours. What does colour mean to you?
I collect a lot of information before starting a painting, from books and archival material, the majority of which is monochrome. The colour decisions I make in terms of whether to use an intense or muted palette comes from the immediate emotional reaction I may have towards an image and how I want it to be perceived. I use colour, tone and hue as emotional signifiers and these different emotional intensities enable me to direct the narrative in each work. I prefer to pre-mix colours, thinking about how they will resonate and to create an idea of the visionary. This allows the images to be ethereal projections or silent interfaces. I also associate colour as being evocative of a particular historical period and use this reference to create a sense of space. In my recent work, I think the colours are soft and quiet, which evokes a sense of distance.
There’s a stark contrast in the subjects and contexts of your works - which feature women with ‘strong sense of identity in their art and literature’, but ‘vague biographies’. What informs your selection?
I am very interested in stories and biographies of individuals who lived an aesthetic lifestyle and represented their aspirations through fashion and art, particularly in the early twentieth century. I am inspired by avant-garde women who contributed to art and culture but remain marginalised figures in history. These women such as Maria Lani or Iris Tree have a clear sense of identity, represented through their writing, art, or life as muses. Many times, I have often returned to Nusch Eluard and Lee Miller as subjects. For me, they redefined the role of the muse and the ideas they explored in their art. Their aesthetic vision reinforced the influence they have on my paintings.
Many of the women I refer to are liberated modern thinkers, but with sparse biographies they become somewhat fictionalised characters. This allows me to explore within the painting an interpretation of these narratives.
Thinking more specifically about the women I reference; I would say as protagonists that they have a clear sense of their identity through self-representation. I depict them as performers in an unknown narrative, but I also want them to possess an emotive energy. I hope to portray an intimate revising of these characters, redeeming and conversing with images through the sensual, eroticised, visceral quality of paint.
The artist Gwen John is currently on show in the rooms adjacent to yours; you’ve previously said that it is ‘irrelevant’ whether we first encounter women as models and muses, so long as we learn about their stories more widely. Do you consider your practice to be as much historically or politically as artistically motivated, or both?
Perhaps both, although I prefer to be not so prescriptive as to say I am motivated by any specific agenda. I have always been interested in our shared responses to archival images, our sense of time and our knowledge of historical events. My portraits are spectres, images conjured through art and writing that perhaps can be understood as a romantic appeal for another alternative aesthetic state.
Alongside your own exhibition, you present Chorus, a selection of works from the Pallant House collection, which includes the likes of Glyn Philpot, plus Duncan Grant and Paul Cezanne’s ‘Bathers’, curated in conversation. Do you think that artists engage with - or intervene in - collections differently to art historians or museum curators?
As an artist, I typically navigate my way through exhibitions by hopping between one object and another. I use an aesthetic interpretation to connect disparate ideas to the present and this allows the historical context to have a relevance and meaning within my own practice. I approached the Pallant House Collection with a similar perspective. I conceived my selection as an assemblage, choosing works that shared a charged intensity, focused by a desire to seize the interior lives of their subjects.
My curation is focused on creating a nuanced personal choreography, with an intention of allowing works to resonate and images sing. My selection at Pallant House was titled Song for the Last Act: Chorus; the idea of voices in unison, connecting to my solo show within the same venue. My selection could be considered a continuation of my curation of my solo show at Plateau, Frac Île-de-France, Paris in 2017. Amongst my own works, I included historical works by avant-garde women artists. The conversations between the works are apparent and visualise inspirational sources instead of academic comparisons. These opportunities are unique and allow me to share a moment of self-reflection, projecting an objective insight onto the images and histories I am drawn to.
Kaye Donachie lives and works in London. Her exhibition Song for the Last Act is on view at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester until 8 October 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
You’ve called your portraits ‘vehicles for painting’; what does that mean to you?
Rather than make a portrait in a traditional sense of attempting to create a likeness, I prefer to re-imagine a cast of women, portraying them as actors, modernist performers, and non-conformist poets. This invention allows me to consider the face as an armature, a familiar structure that can support descriptive applications and passages of paint and allow figural and abstract gestures to be read simultaneously. I enjoy the visceral qualities of paint and the evocative painterly marks that can facilitate our emotional connections to an image.
You’ve previously said you’re interested in rereading the histories within works, and overlaying different works to tell altogether new histories. What part does collection (of literature, visual art) play in your artistic process?
Literature is very important to me; it lets me re-imagine or give a voice to my characters and sets a tone within the work. Poems and fragments of writing by avant-garde women direct how the works within a show can work as a tableau. I organise how I want the paintings to work together by using literature to introduce a sense of history and place. Each title is a line of poetry and acts as an echo of words, creating an abstract script that allows me to think of new imagery. The exhibition space will often dictate how a group of paintings will hang together as an elliptical poem. The texts and titles provide another layer, and this also allows me to expand my references.
You work from archive B/W photographs, but your works are shaded with muted colours. What does colour mean to you?
I collect a lot of information before starting a painting, from books and archival material, the majority of which is monochrome. The colour decisions I make in terms of whether to use an intense or muted palette comes from the immediate emotional reaction I may have towards an image and how I want it to be perceived. I use colour, tone and hue as emotional signifiers and these different emotional intensities enable me to direct the narrative in each work. I prefer to pre-mix colours, thinking about how they will resonate and to create an idea of the visionary. This allows the images to be ethereal projections or silent interfaces. I also associate colour as being evocative of a particular historical period and use this reference to create a sense of space. In my recent work, I think the colours are soft and quiet, which evokes a sense of distance.
There’s a stark contrast in the subjects and contexts of your works - which feature women with ‘strong sense of identity in their art and literature’, but ‘vague biographies’. What informs your selection?
I am very interested in stories and biographies of individuals who lived an aesthetic lifestyle and represented their aspirations through fashion and art, particularly in the early twentieth century. I am inspired by avant-garde women who contributed to art and culture but remain marginalised figures in history. These women such as Maria Lani or Iris Tree have a clear sense of identity, represented through their writing, art, or life as muses. Many times, I have often returned to Nusch Eluard and Lee Miller as subjects. For me, they redefined the role of the muse and the ideas they explored in their art. Their aesthetic vision reinforced the influence they have on my paintings.
Many of the women I refer to are liberated modern thinkers, but with sparse biographies they become somewhat fictionalised characters. This allows me to explore within the painting an interpretation of these narratives.
Thinking more specifically about the women I reference; I would say as protagonists that they have a clear sense of their identity through self-representation. I depict them as performers in an unknown narrative, but I also want them to possess an emotive energy. I hope to portray an intimate revising of these characters, redeeming and conversing with images through the sensual, eroticised, visceral quality of paint.
The artist Gwen John is currently on show in the rooms adjacent to yours; you’ve previously said that it is ‘irrelevant’ whether we first encounter women as models and muses, so long as we learn about their stories more widely. Do you consider your practice to be as much historically or politically as artistically motivated, or both?
Perhaps both, although I prefer to be not so prescriptive as to say I am motivated by any specific agenda. I have always been interested in our shared responses to archival images, our sense of time and our knowledge of historical events. My portraits are spectres, images conjured through art and writing that perhaps can be understood as a romantic appeal for another alternative aesthetic state.
Alongside your own exhibition, you present Chorus, a selection of works from the Pallant House collection, which includes the likes of Glyn Philpot, plus Duncan Grant and Paul Cezanne’s ‘Bathers’, curated in conversation. Do you think that artists engage with - or intervene in - collections differently to art historians or museum curators?
As an artist, I typically navigate my way through exhibitions by hopping between one object and another. I use an aesthetic interpretation to connect disparate ideas to the present and this allows the historical context to have a relevance and meaning within my own practice. I approached the Pallant House Collection with a similar perspective. I conceived my selection as an assemblage, choosing works that shared a charged intensity, focused by a desire to seize the interior lives of their subjects.
My curation is focused on creating a nuanced personal choreography, with an intention of allowing works to resonate and images sing. My selection at Pallant House was titled Song for the Last Act: Chorus; the idea of voices in unison, connecting to my solo show within the same venue. My selection could be considered a continuation of my curation of my solo show at Plateau, Frac Île-de-France, Paris in 2017. Amongst my own works, I included historical works by avant-garde women artists. The conversations between the works are apparent and visualise inspirational sources instead of academic comparisons. These opportunities are unique and allow me to share a moment of self-reflection, projecting an objective insight onto the images and histories I am drawn to.
Kaye Donachie lives and works in London. Her exhibition Song for the Last Act is on view at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester until 8 October 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
You’ve called your portraits ‘vehicles for painting’; what does that mean to you?
Rather than make a portrait in a traditional sense of attempting to create a likeness, I prefer to re-imagine a cast of women, portraying them as actors, modernist performers, and non-conformist poets. This invention allows me to consider the face as an armature, a familiar structure that can support descriptive applications and passages of paint and allow figural and abstract gestures to be read simultaneously. I enjoy the visceral qualities of paint and the evocative painterly marks that can facilitate our emotional connections to an image.
You’ve previously said you’re interested in rereading the histories within works, and overlaying different works to tell altogether new histories. What part does collection (of literature, visual art) play in your artistic process?
Literature is very important to me; it lets me re-imagine or give a voice to my characters and sets a tone within the work. Poems and fragments of writing by avant-garde women direct how the works within a show can work as a tableau. I organise how I want the paintings to work together by using literature to introduce a sense of history and place. Each title is a line of poetry and acts as an echo of words, creating an abstract script that allows me to think of new imagery. The exhibition space will often dictate how a group of paintings will hang together as an elliptical poem. The texts and titles provide another layer, and this also allows me to expand my references.
You work from archive B/W photographs, but your works are shaded with muted colours. What does colour mean to you?
I collect a lot of information before starting a painting, from books and archival material, the majority of which is monochrome. The colour decisions I make in terms of whether to use an intense or muted palette comes from the immediate emotional reaction I may have towards an image and how I want it to be perceived. I use colour, tone and hue as emotional signifiers and these different emotional intensities enable me to direct the narrative in each work. I prefer to pre-mix colours, thinking about how they will resonate and to create an idea of the visionary. This allows the images to be ethereal projections or silent interfaces. I also associate colour as being evocative of a particular historical period and use this reference to create a sense of space. In my recent work, I think the colours are soft and quiet, which evokes a sense of distance.
There’s a stark contrast in the subjects and contexts of your works - which feature women with ‘strong sense of identity in their art and literature’, but ‘vague biographies’. What informs your selection?
I am very interested in stories and biographies of individuals who lived an aesthetic lifestyle and represented their aspirations through fashion and art, particularly in the early twentieth century. I am inspired by avant-garde women who contributed to art and culture but remain marginalised figures in history. These women such as Maria Lani or Iris Tree have a clear sense of identity, represented through their writing, art, or life as muses. Many times, I have often returned to Nusch Eluard and Lee Miller as subjects. For me, they redefined the role of the muse and the ideas they explored in their art. Their aesthetic vision reinforced the influence they have on my paintings.
Many of the women I refer to are liberated modern thinkers, but with sparse biographies they become somewhat fictionalised characters. This allows me to explore within the painting an interpretation of these narratives.
Thinking more specifically about the women I reference; I would say as protagonists that they have a clear sense of their identity through self-representation. I depict them as performers in an unknown narrative, but I also want them to possess an emotive energy. I hope to portray an intimate revising of these characters, redeeming and conversing with images through the sensual, eroticised, visceral quality of paint.
The artist Gwen John is currently on show in the rooms adjacent to yours; you’ve previously said that it is ‘irrelevant’ whether we first encounter women as models and muses, so long as we learn about their stories more widely. Do you consider your practice to be as much historically or politically as artistically motivated, or both?
Perhaps both, although I prefer to be not so prescriptive as to say I am motivated by any specific agenda. I have always been interested in our shared responses to archival images, our sense of time and our knowledge of historical events. My portraits are spectres, images conjured through art and writing that perhaps can be understood as a romantic appeal for another alternative aesthetic state.
Alongside your own exhibition, you present Chorus, a selection of works from the Pallant House collection, which includes the likes of Glyn Philpot, plus Duncan Grant and Paul Cezanne’s ‘Bathers’, curated in conversation. Do you think that artists engage with - or intervene in - collections differently to art historians or museum curators?
As an artist, I typically navigate my way through exhibitions by hopping between one object and another. I use an aesthetic interpretation to connect disparate ideas to the present and this allows the historical context to have a relevance and meaning within my own practice. I approached the Pallant House Collection with a similar perspective. I conceived my selection as an assemblage, choosing works that shared a charged intensity, focused by a desire to seize the interior lives of their subjects.
My curation is focused on creating a nuanced personal choreography, with an intention of allowing works to resonate and images sing. My selection at Pallant House was titled Song for the Last Act: Chorus; the idea of voices in unison, connecting to my solo show within the same venue. My selection could be considered a continuation of my curation of my solo show at Plateau, Frac Île-de-France, Paris in 2017. Amongst my own works, I included historical works by avant-garde women artists. The conversations between the works are apparent and visualise inspirational sources instead of academic comparisons. These opportunities are unique and allow me to share a moment of self-reflection, projecting an objective insight onto the images and histories I am drawn to.
Kaye Donachie lives and works in London. Her exhibition Song for the Last Act is on view at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester until 8 October 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
You’ve called your portraits ‘vehicles for painting’; what does that mean to you?
Rather than make a portrait in a traditional sense of attempting to create a likeness, I prefer to re-imagine a cast of women, portraying them as actors, modernist performers, and non-conformist poets. This invention allows me to consider the face as an armature, a familiar structure that can support descriptive applications and passages of paint and allow figural and abstract gestures to be read simultaneously. I enjoy the visceral qualities of paint and the evocative painterly marks that can facilitate our emotional connections to an image.
You’ve previously said you’re interested in rereading the histories within works, and overlaying different works to tell altogether new histories. What part does collection (of literature, visual art) play in your artistic process?
Literature is very important to me; it lets me re-imagine or give a voice to my characters and sets a tone within the work. Poems and fragments of writing by avant-garde women direct how the works within a show can work as a tableau. I organise how I want the paintings to work together by using literature to introduce a sense of history and place. Each title is a line of poetry and acts as an echo of words, creating an abstract script that allows me to think of new imagery. The exhibition space will often dictate how a group of paintings will hang together as an elliptical poem. The texts and titles provide another layer, and this also allows me to expand my references.
You work from archive B/W photographs, but your works are shaded with muted colours. What does colour mean to you?
I collect a lot of information before starting a painting, from books and archival material, the majority of which is monochrome. The colour decisions I make in terms of whether to use an intense or muted palette comes from the immediate emotional reaction I may have towards an image and how I want it to be perceived. I use colour, tone and hue as emotional signifiers and these different emotional intensities enable me to direct the narrative in each work. I prefer to pre-mix colours, thinking about how they will resonate and to create an idea of the visionary. This allows the images to be ethereal projections or silent interfaces. I also associate colour as being evocative of a particular historical period and use this reference to create a sense of space. In my recent work, I think the colours are soft and quiet, which evokes a sense of distance.
There’s a stark contrast in the subjects and contexts of your works - which feature women with ‘strong sense of identity in their art and literature’, but ‘vague biographies’. What informs your selection?
I am very interested in stories and biographies of individuals who lived an aesthetic lifestyle and represented their aspirations through fashion and art, particularly in the early twentieth century. I am inspired by avant-garde women who contributed to art and culture but remain marginalised figures in history. These women such as Maria Lani or Iris Tree have a clear sense of identity, represented through their writing, art, or life as muses. Many times, I have often returned to Nusch Eluard and Lee Miller as subjects. For me, they redefined the role of the muse and the ideas they explored in their art. Their aesthetic vision reinforced the influence they have on my paintings.
Many of the women I refer to are liberated modern thinkers, but with sparse biographies they become somewhat fictionalised characters. This allows me to explore within the painting an interpretation of these narratives.
Thinking more specifically about the women I reference; I would say as protagonists that they have a clear sense of their identity through self-representation. I depict them as performers in an unknown narrative, but I also want them to possess an emotive energy. I hope to portray an intimate revising of these characters, redeeming and conversing with images through the sensual, eroticised, visceral quality of paint.
The artist Gwen John is currently on show in the rooms adjacent to yours; you’ve previously said that it is ‘irrelevant’ whether we first encounter women as models and muses, so long as we learn about their stories more widely. Do you consider your practice to be as much historically or politically as artistically motivated, or both?
Perhaps both, although I prefer to be not so prescriptive as to say I am motivated by any specific agenda. I have always been interested in our shared responses to archival images, our sense of time and our knowledge of historical events. My portraits are spectres, images conjured through art and writing that perhaps can be understood as a romantic appeal for another alternative aesthetic state.
Alongside your own exhibition, you present Chorus, a selection of works from the Pallant House collection, which includes the likes of Glyn Philpot, plus Duncan Grant and Paul Cezanne’s ‘Bathers’, curated in conversation. Do you think that artists engage with - or intervene in - collections differently to art historians or museum curators?
As an artist, I typically navigate my way through exhibitions by hopping between one object and another. I use an aesthetic interpretation to connect disparate ideas to the present and this allows the historical context to have a relevance and meaning within my own practice. I approached the Pallant House Collection with a similar perspective. I conceived my selection as an assemblage, choosing works that shared a charged intensity, focused by a desire to seize the interior lives of their subjects.
My curation is focused on creating a nuanced personal choreography, with an intention of allowing works to resonate and images sing. My selection at Pallant House was titled Song for the Last Act: Chorus; the idea of voices in unison, connecting to my solo show within the same venue. My selection could be considered a continuation of my curation of my solo show at Plateau, Frac Île-de-France, Paris in 2017. Amongst my own works, I included historical works by avant-garde women artists. The conversations between the works are apparent and visualise inspirational sources instead of academic comparisons. These opportunities are unique and allow me to share a moment of self-reflection, projecting an objective insight onto the images and histories I am drawn to.
Kaye Donachie lives and works in London. Her exhibition Song for the Last Act is on view at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester until 8 October 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
You’ve called your portraits ‘vehicles for painting’; what does that mean to you?
Rather than make a portrait in a traditional sense of attempting to create a likeness, I prefer to re-imagine a cast of women, portraying them as actors, modernist performers, and non-conformist poets. This invention allows me to consider the face as an armature, a familiar structure that can support descriptive applications and passages of paint and allow figural and abstract gestures to be read simultaneously. I enjoy the visceral qualities of paint and the evocative painterly marks that can facilitate our emotional connections to an image.
You’ve previously said you’re interested in rereading the histories within works, and overlaying different works to tell altogether new histories. What part does collection (of literature, visual art) play in your artistic process?
Literature is very important to me; it lets me re-imagine or give a voice to my characters and sets a tone within the work. Poems and fragments of writing by avant-garde women direct how the works within a show can work as a tableau. I organise how I want the paintings to work together by using literature to introduce a sense of history and place. Each title is a line of poetry and acts as an echo of words, creating an abstract script that allows me to think of new imagery. The exhibition space will often dictate how a group of paintings will hang together as an elliptical poem. The texts and titles provide another layer, and this also allows me to expand my references.
You work from archive B/W photographs, but your works are shaded with muted colours. What does colour mean to you?
I collect a lot of information before starting a painting, from books and archival material, the majority of which is monochrome. The colour decisions I make in terms of whether to use an intense or muted palette comes from the immediate emotional reaction I may have towards an image and how I want it to be perceived. I use colour, tone and hue as emotional signifiers and these different emotional intensities enable me to direct the narrative in each work. I prefer to pre-mix colours, thinking about how they will resonate and to create an idea of the visionary. This allows the images to be ethereal projections or silent interfaces. I also associate colour as being evocative of a particular historical period and use this reference to create a sense of space. In my recent work, I think the colours are soft and quiet, which evokes a sense of distance.
There’s a stark contrast in the subjects and contexts of your works - which feature women with ‘strong sense of identity in their art and literature’, but ‘vague biographies’. What informs your selection?
I am very interested in stories and biographies of individuals who lived an aesthetic lifestyle and represented their aspirations through fashion and art, particularly in the early twentieth century. I am inspired by avant-garde women who contributed to art and culture but remain marginalised figures in history. These women such as Maria Lani or Iris Tree have a clear sense of identity, represented through their writing, art, or life as muses. Many times, I have often returned to Nusch Eluard and Lee Miller as subjects. For me, they redefined the role of the muse and the ideas they explored in their art. Their aesthetic vision reinforced the influence they have on my paintings.
Many of the women I refer to are liberated modern thinkers, but with sparse biographies they become somewhat fictionalised characters. This allows me to explore within the painting an interpretation of these narratives.
Thinking more specifically about the women I reference; I would say as protagonists that they have a clear sense of their identity through self-representation. I depict them as performers in an unknown narrative, but I also want them to possess an emotive energy. I hope to portray an intimate revising of these characters, redeeming and conversing with images through the sensual, eroticised, visceral quality of paint.
The artist Gwen John is currently on show in the rooms adjacent to yours; you’ve previously said that it is ‘irrelevant’ whether we first encounter women as models and muses, so long as we learn about their stories more widely. Do you consider your practice to be as much historically or politically as artistically motivated, or both?
Perhaps both, although I prefer to be not so prescriptive as to say I am motivated by any specific agenda. I have always been interested in our shared responses to archival images, our sense of time and our knowledge of historical events. My portraits are spectres, images conjured through art and writing that perhaps can be understood as a romantic appeal for another alternative aesthetic state.
Alongside your own exhibition, you present Chorus, a selection of works from the Pallant House collection, which includes the likes of Glyn Philpot, plus Duncan Grant and Paul Cezanne’s ‘Bathers’, curated in conversation. Do you think that artists engage with - or intervene in - collections differently to art historians or museum curators?
As an artist, I typically navigate my way through exhibitions by hopping between one object and another. I use an aesthetic interpretation to connect disparate ideas to the present and this allows the historical context to have a relevance and meaning within my own practice. I approached the Pallant House Collection with a similar perspective. I conceived my selection as an assemblage, choosing works that shared a charged intensity, focused by a desire to seize the interior lives of their subjects.
My curation is focused on creating a nuanced personal choreography, with an intention of allowing works to resonate and images sing. My selection at Pallant House was titled Song for the Last Act: Chorus; the idea of voices in unison, connecting to my solo show within the same venue. My selection could be considered a continuation of my curation of my solo show at Plateau, Frac Île-de-France, Paris in 2017. Amongst my own works, I included historical works by avant-garde women artists. The conversations between the works are apparent and visualise inspirational sources instead of academic comparisons. These opportunities are unique and allow me to share a moment of self-reflection, projecting an objective insight onto the images and histories I am drawn to.
Kaye Donachie lives and works in London. Her exhibition Song for the Last Act is on view at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester until 8 October 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
You’ve called your portraits ‘vehicles for painting’; what does that mean to you?
Rather than make a portrait in a traditional sense of attempting to create a likeness, I prefer to re-imagine a cast of women, portraying them as actors, modernist performers, and non-conformist poets. This invention allows me to consider the face as an armature, a familiar structure that can support descriptive applications and passages of paint and allow figural and abstract gestures to be read simultaneously. I enjoy the visceral qualities of paint and the evocative painterly marks that can facilitate our emotional connections to an image.
You’ve previously said you’re interested in rereading the histories within works, and overlaying different works to tell altogether new histories. What part does collection (of literature, visual art) play in your artistic process?
Literature is very important to me; it lets me re-imagine or give a voice to my characters and sets a tone within the work. Poems and fragments of writing by avant-garde women direct how the works within a show can work as a tableau. I organise how I want the paintings to work together by using literature to introduce a sense of history and place. Each title is a line of poetry and acts as an echo of words, creating an abstract script that allows me to think of new imagery. The exhibition space will often dictate how a group of paintings will hang together as an elliptical poem. The texts and titles provide another layer, and this also allows me to expand my references.
You work from archive B/W photographs, but your works are shaded with muted colours. What does colour mean to you?
I collect a lot of information before starting a painting, from books and archival material, the majority of which is monochrome. The colour decisions I make in terms of whether to use an intense or muted palette comes from the immediate emotional reaction I may have towards an image and how I want it to be perceived. I use colour, tone and hue as emotional signifiers and these different emotional intensities enable me to direct the narrative in each work. I prefer to pre-mix colours, thinking about how they will resonate and to create an idea of the visionary. This allows the images to be ethereal projections or silent interfaces. I also associate colour as being evocative of a particular historical period and use this reference to create a sense of space. In my recent work, I think the colours are soft and quiet, which evokes a sense of distance.
There’s a stark contrast in the subjects and contexts of your works - which feature women with ‘strong sense of identity in their art and literature’, but ‘vague biographies’. What informs your selection?
I am very interested in stories and biographies of individuals who lived an aesthetic lifestyle and represented their aspirations through fashion and art, particularly in the early twentieth century. I am inspired by avant-garde women who contributed to art and culture but remain marginalised figures in history. These women such as Maria Lani or Iris Tree have a clear sense of identity, represented through their writing, art, or life as muses. Many times, I have often returned to Nusch Eluard and Lee Miller as subjects. For me, they redefined the role of the muse and the ideas they explored in their art. Their aesthetic vision reinforced the influence they have on my paintings.
Many of the women I refer to are liberated modern thinkers, but with sparse biographies they become somewhat fictionalised characters. This allows me to explore within the painting an interpretation of these narratives.
Thinking more specifically about the women I reference; I would say as protagonists that they have a clear sense of their identity through self-representation. I depict them as performers in an unknown narrative, but I also want them to possess an emotive energy. I hope to portray an intimate revising of these characters, redeeming and conversing with images through the sensual, eroticised, visceral quality of paint.
The artist Gwen John is currently on show in the rooms adjacent to yours; you’ve previously said that it is ‘irrelevant’ whether we first encounter women as models and muses, so long as we learn about their stories more widely. Do you consider your practice to be as much historically or politically as artistically motivated, or both?
Perhaps both, although I prefer to be not so prescriptive as to say I am motivated by any specific agenda. I have always been interested in our shared responses to archival images, our sense of time and our knowledge of historical events. My portraits are spectres, images conjured through art and writing that perhaps can be understood as a romantic appeal for another alternative aesthetic state.
Alongside your own exhibition, you present Chorus, a selection of works from the Pallant House collection, which includes the likes of Glyn Philpot, plus Duncan Grant and Paul Cezanne’s ‘Bathers’, curated in conversation. Do you think that artists engage with - or intervene in - collections differently to art historians or museum curators?
As an artist, I typically navigate my way through exhibitions by hopping between one object and another. I use an aesthetic interpretation to connect disparate ideas to the present and this allows the historical context to have a relevance and meaning within my own practice. I approached the Pallant House Collection with a similar perspective. I conceived my selection as an assemblage, choosing works that shared a charged intensity, focused by a desire to seize the interior lives of their subjects.
My curation is focused on creating a nuanced personal choreography, with an intention of allowing works to resonate and images sing. My selection at Pallant House was titled Song for the Last Act: Chorus; the idea of voices in unison, connecting to my solo show within the same venue. My selection could be considered a continuation of my curation of my solo show at Plateau, Frac Île-de-France, Paris in 2017. Amongst my own works, I included historical works by avant-garde women artists. The conversations between the works are apparent and visualise inspirational sources instead of academic comparisons. These opportunities are unique and allow me to share a moment of self-reflection, projecting an objective insight onto the images and histories I am drawn to.
Kaye Donachie lives and works in London. Her exhibition Song for the Last Act is on view at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester until 8 October 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
