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Elizabeth MacKenzie

negotiating doubt
  • Current + Recent Projects
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  • Blog: Negotiating Doubt
 

Likeness (ongoing)

My goal is not to represent specific faces within this series, although I am interested in evoking recognition. The organization of features may call to mind a specific likeness for the viewer. As the features dissolve and emerge, the faces are both familiar and strange, comforting and disturbing. How far can the face be abstracted and still remain legible as a face?

I animate the graphite pigment as it floats upon the stone paper. The push and pull of my brush conjures features that appear and disappear. I play with the tension between mark making and illusion it creates.

Likeness 01 (detail)
Likeness 01 (detail)

Watercolour graphite on rock paper

21 x 13.5 cm

Likeness 02 (detail)
Likeness 02 (detail)

Watercolour graphite on rock paper

21 x 13.5 cm

Likeness 03 (detail)
Likeness 03 (detail)

Watercolour graphite on rock paper

21 x 13.5 cm

Likeness 04 (detail)
Likeness 04 (detail)

Watercolour graphite on rock paper

21 x 13.5 cm

Likeness 06 (detail)
Likeness 06 (detail)

Watercolour graphite on rock paper

21 x 13.5 cm

Likeness 07 (detail)
Likeness 07 (detail)

Watercolour graphite on rock paper

21 x 13.5 cm

Likeness 08 (detail)
Likeness 08 (detail)

Watercolour graphite on rock paper

21 x 13.5 cm

Likeness 08 (detail)
Likeness 08 (detail)

Watercolour graphite on rock paper

21 x 13.5 cm

Likeness 10 (detail)
Likeness 10 (detail)

Watercolour graphite on rock paper

21 x 13.5 cm

Likeness 15 (detail)
Likeness 15 (detail)

Watercolour graphite on rock paper

21 x 13.5 cm

Likeness 20 (detail)
Likeness 20 (detail)

Watercolour graphite on rock paper

21 x 13.5 cm

Likeness 21 (detail)
Likeness 21 (detail)

Watercolour graphite on rock paper

21 x 13.5 cm

Invasive Species (ongoing)

This series explores the ecological and political significance of invasive species proliferation in relation to settler colonialism, a colonial project that sought to usurp and displace Indigenous People from their labour, land and resources.


Invasive species are any kind of living organism not native to an ecosystem that causes harm to the local ecology. I am currently focused on plants with names associated with the countries of my ancestry (e.g. Scotch Broom, Scotch Thistle, English Ivy). These drawings feature iconic images of the plants disrupted by extraneous gestures and marks.

An ongoing engagement with ambivalence is reflected in the materials and processes I use within these drawings. I want to interrupt representation and create tension between a physical gesture and the illusion it creates.

 Invasive Species: Scotch Broom, 2018

Invasive Species: Scotch Broom, 2018

Invasive Species: Scotch Broom, 2018
Invasive Species: Scotch Broom, 2018

Watercolour graphite on Terraskin paper

Invasive Species: Scotch Broom Roots, 2018
Invasive Species: Scotch Broom Roots, 2018

Watercolour graphite on Terraskin paper

Invasive Species: English Holly 1, 2017
Invasive Species: English Holly 1, 2017

Watercolour graphite on Terraskin paper

50.8 x 71 cm

 

Invasive Species: English Ivy 1, 2017
Invasive Species: English Ivy 1, 2017

Watercolour graphite on Terraskin paper

23 x 30.5 cm

Invasive Species: Scotch Thistle 2, 2017
Invasive Species: Scotch Thistle 2, 2017

Watercolour graphite on Terraskin paper

50.8 x 71 cm

Invasive Species: Scotch Pine 1, 2017
Invasive Species: Scotch Pine 1, 2017

Watercolour graphite on Terraskin paper

35.5 x 50.8 cm

Invasive Species: Scotch Thistle 4, 2017
Invasive Species: Scotch Thistle 4, 2017

Watercolour graphite on Terraskin paper

35.5 x 50.8 cm

Invasive Species: Scotch Pine 2, 2017
Invasive Species: Scotch Pine 2, 2017

Watercolour graphite on Terraskin paper

35.5 x 50.8 cm

Invasive Species: English Holly 2, 2017
Invasive Species: English Holly 2, 2017

Watercolour graphite on Terraskin paper

35.5 x 50.8 cm

Invasive Species: Scotch Thistle with Roots, 2017
Invasive Species: Scotch Thistle with Roots, 2017

Watercolour graphite on Terraskin paper

71 x 99 cm

Invasive Species: Scotch Thistle 3, 2017
Invasive Species: Scotch Thistle 3, 2017

Watercolour graphite on Terraskin paper

23 x 30.5 cm

Invasive Species: Scotch Broom, 2017
Invasive Species: Scotch Broom, 2017

Watercolour graphite on Terraskin paper

23 x 30.5 cm

Invasive Species: Scotch Thistle 1, 2017
Invasive Species: Scotch Thistle 1, 2017

Watercolour graphite on Terraskin paper

23 x 30.5 cm

Invasive Species: English Ivy 2, 2017
Invasive Species: English Ivy 2, 2017

Watercolour graphite on Terraskin paper

23 x 30.5 cm

Equation, 2018

This wall drawing was produced as part of Leaning Out of Windows (LOoW), an interdisciplinary project that, “aims to explore how artists might work with scientists to develop a shared understanding of how knowledge can be translated across their disciplinary communities.”

In their introduction to this project, organizers Ingrid Koenig and Randy Lee Cutler explained that the German expression for interdisciplinarity, “aus dem Fenster lehnen,” roughly translates as, “leaning out of the window.”

The first stage of this endeavour began in January 2017, with a series of seminar presentations by physicists on the subject of antimatter, at TRIUMF, Canada’s particle accelerator centre.

Shortly after attending the seminar I began a series of drawings based on the Dirac equation, developed by British physicist Paul Dirac in 1928, which predicted the existence of antimatter—the mirror image of ordinary matter. Equations make me think of hieroglyphs—they’re mysterious and cryptic messages that I know carry meaning, but this meaning is impenetrable to me.

For the LOoW exhibition, which took place at Emily Carr University from Jan 26 - Feb 8, 2018, I produced a wall-drawing, which allowed me one final opportunity to handle the Dirac equation. I used powdered graphite applied with brushes to represent a large, out-of-focus, mirrored image of the equation.

Through the course of my participation in the LOoW project, I drew this equation over and over again. While my work failed to wrest the equation’s particular meaning—the play of materiality and gesture I undertook is not unlike the work of experimental physicists, concerned with the observation of physical phenomena.

People often mistake the concern of art and science with the production of things. While both may lead to the production things, they are first and foremost methods of inquiry—their processes allow us to understand and appreciate the universe and our place within it.

Equation, 2018
Equation, 2018

Powdered graphite on existing wall

Rachel Topham Photography

Equation, detail
Equation, detail

Powdered graphite on existing wall.

Rachel Topham Photography

Equation, 2018
Equation, 2018

Powdered graphite on existing wall

Rachel Topham Photography

Equation 1
Equation 1

Watercolour graphite on Terraskin paper

13.5 x 21 cm

Equation 2
Equation 2

Watercolour graphite on Terraskin paper

13.5 x 21 cm

Equation 3
Equation 3

Watercolour graphite on Terraskin paper

13.5 x 21 cm

Equation 4
Equation 4

Watercolour graphite on Terraskin paper

13.5 x 21 cm

Equation 5
Equation 5

Watercolour graphite on Terraskin paper

13.5 x 21 cm

Equation 6
Equation 6

Watercolour graphite on Terraskin paper

13.5 x 21 cm

Equation 7
Equation 7

Watercolour graphite on Terraskin paper

13.5 x 21 cm

Equation 8
Equation 8

Watercolour graphite on Terraskin paper

13.5 x 21 cm

Equation 9
Equation 9

Watercolour graphite on Terraskin paper

13.5 x 21 cm

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Back to Current + Recent Projects
Likeness 01 (detail)
12
Likeness (ongoing)
 Invasive Species: Scotch Broom, 2018
15
Invasive Species, 2017-2018
Equation, 2018
12
Equation, 2018

I respectfully acknowledge that I live and work on the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. 

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.