The process
Donnelly – who achieves a light, blurring effect through use of large brushes, her fingers, palette knives and, occasionally, paint rollers – deals in images of what she calls “half-remembered places”. She’ll act as guide for part of the way there, but we’ll have to complete the trip ourselves.
Take “Overlooking the Medina”. For many observers, this will look like Marrakech; but for others, it may recall a very different medina, elsewhere in Morocco or beyond it. The painter leaves us to tease from our respective memories and pasts a personal connection with her imagery – while simultaneously giving herself licence to revel in vivid colours. Such colours Donnelly attributes, in part, to the brilliant light she experienced growing up in and around Johannesburg; in part, to the powerful combinations used by one of her favourite artists, Wassily Kandinsky; and, in part, to her joy and relief at recently having overcome cancer for the third time.
Particularly striking are the rich blues – a mixture of phthalocyanine and cobalt – she uses to capture water. Fish appear in her images almost as often as people. She says she’s fascinated by the dynamic movement of aquatic creatures. No matter how sophisticated camera technology has become for filming underwater, life beneath the waves is – and will always remain – an unknown, and as such, a source of wonder and enchantment.
Fish, of course, have a longstanding, symbolic association in Western culture, representing as they do the Christian faith. Donnelly, however, has hit upon an alternative symbolism. Two canvases from her current exhibition at La Galleria, in London, depict a school of koi carp. Admittedly, these are fish more commonly found in ponds than the deep, blue sea – but it’s still instructive that, in parts of China, owing to their fondness for swimming in groups, koi are said to represent togetherness, “which is something we, as people, can all aspire to”, Donnelly says. Not to mention something she encourages through her work: making the whole artistic process, as we have already observed, a collaborative one between painter and viewer.’
Alastair Smart Art critic and associate editor of christies.com
