Our latest ‘Artists You Need To Know’ feature is focused upon one of the finer painters in the St. Catharines / Niagara region: Melanie Macdonald. MacDonald lives in downtown St. Catharines and is an active member of the Niagara Artists Centre (NAC). Her work has been selected for exhibitions in Niagara, Hamilton, London, Kingston, Western New York and Quebec, and is in the permanent collection of the City of St. Catharines as well as Rodman Hall Art Centre (as well as numerous private collections).
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Pink Flamingos, from Florida Noir, 2017
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Shark, from Florida Noir, 2017
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Trumpet Lichen and Pine Needles, from the series Lichens, 2017
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Forest Floor, Alice, ON, from the series Lichens, 2019
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Queen of the Waves, from the Scrapbook Project, 2011.
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If You Have Ghosts Then You Have Everything, from the Scrapbook Project, 2014
MacDonald describes her work in the following manner: “I regard my paintings of domestic scenes as visual poems that mark the brief, curious moments that punctuate the everyday.” Often working with found objects that may superficially have banal tendencies, MacDonald creates paintings that employ these everyday components towards a larger narrative (as with The Great Scrapbook Project) or that, with a painterly examination and focus, shift how we ‘see’ and offer sometimes darker, or more ominous elements. In her Florida Noir series, for example, the kitschy, almost disposable trinkets so often dismissed as touristy ‘trash’ become interesting and contested motifs for memory, or manufacturing, or even how ‘landscape’ (with all the history and myths in that genre) can be encapsulated in an oft – dismissed ‘souvenir’ or mundane bit of porcelain.
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Alligator from Florida Noir, 2017
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Dark Swan from Florida Noir, 2017
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Donkey from The Menagerie, 2019
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Hot Pink Song Bird from The Menagerie, 2020
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If Pigs Could Float from The Scrapbook Project, 2014
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The Great Burning of 2031-2033 (For Will McClelland), from The Great Scrapbook Project, 2017
Past exhibitions have been at Grimsby Public Art Gallery, Jordan Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Burlington and City of Niagara Falls Museums. A winner of a Trillium Excellence in the Arts Emerging Artist Award from the City of St. Catharines, Melanie has also been awarded numerous Ontario Arts Council – Conseil des arts de l’Ontario Exhibition Assistance grants.
You can see more of her work at her site, including some installation shots to give a more appropriate sense of her very large works, and several texts to offer more insight into her images and ideas.