| US-born, UK-based artist Whitney McVeigh seems to have developed what could unconventionally be referred to as a “head fetish.” This said, her traditionally-cropped bust portraits diverge from traditional portrait painting as soon as her brush dashes and drips across her canvas. Seeing her Heads Series as an "intricate study of human truth," she explores what she has often called "the internal landscape: our make-up." Like the sculpted heads of Elisabeth Frink, McVeigh’s Heads allude to the tension between universal human frailty and the totemic qualities of the human image that are central to ancient and “primitive” art. |  |
Suzie Walshe
Whitney McVeigh is nominated for the Sovereign European Art Prize
by Saatchi coordinator Rebecca Wilson. Her work was on view at the The
Gallery Soho, London in March.
Whitney McVeigh, Head Series, 2007. Acrylic ink and watercolor on paper. Courtesy of the artist.
US-born, UK-based artist Whitney McVeigh seems to have developed what could unconventionally be referred to as a “head fetish.” This said, her traditionally-cropped bust portraits diverge from traditional portrait painting as soon as her brush dashes and drips across her canvas.
Seeing her Heads Series as an "intricate study of human truth," she explores what she has often called "the internal landscape: our make-up." Like the sculpted heads of Elisabeth Frink, McVeigh’s Heads allude to the tension between universal human frailty and the totemic qualities of the human image that are central to ancient and “primitive” art. An experienced and mature artist, McVeigh’s signature focus centers on the human form, particularly women’s bodies. She exploits her own image, sexuality, and dreamlike visions through her watery mark making and expansive pigmented bleeds. Elegant and elusive, her paintings embrace ambiguity in life, death, and art, often translating the chaste into the erotic with painterly abandon.
Her intensely subjective and skewed self-portraits, and ambivalently gesturing figures are often depicted in rich colors, suggesting both Surrealist and Expressionist references. Her process is moored in intuition and automatism and her treatment of figuration is rooted in the spirit of Modernist artists ranging from Francis Bacon to Cy Twombly and Robert Motherwell. McVeigh’s paintings do not tell a story, nor do they provide a description of a situation—the work does far more than this. Each image attempts to unsettle the observer’s conventional assumption of a person’s most scrutinized body part—her face. McVeigh captures the notion that identity is perhaps something more internal, more ephemeral, and more personal that what the eye may grasp on first glance.
