Mary MACKEY
Merit Award 2009

work shown : Algonquin Series, N° 1 of 8 panels (2006)
Sandblasted and painted glass
20 x 20 cm
(click on picture to see larger image)

Project

I am always learning and developing new ways of working and living with glass. For a number of years I have been using enamels on float glass which is sandblasted and acid etched. I have pushed the technique as far as I can on the scale that I can physically and technically manage.

I want to work on a larger scale, to explore the possibilities of translating the kind of glass I make into architectural situations, to make a series of larger scale works for exhibition. I use my camera like a notebook, my research, and I have years of images stored, of shadows and textures, line and light, just sitting there begging to be used in glass. I can picture the finished works even now, but I don't have the knowledge or facilities to experiment. I want to work with a studio that has the facilities to use enamels on a large scale, who can help me to make the best use of my images and develop my work beyond where it is now without compromising my artistic integrity. I have identified a studio who have expressed interest in my work and in working with me, all I need is the funding.

Artistic Vision

As a painter, a mark-maker, the strange, liquid-like properties inherent in glass fascinate and intrigue me. The play of transparency and opacity of glass, the depths of its shadows and the textures of its surface exert the same hold on my imagination that water does, whatever its form, sea, river, slow shifting mist, moving glacial ice, continually making its own mark, however impermanent.

Memories and making, the process of gathering and sifting, allowing the layers to settle and seeing what rises to the surface, working the surface, etching into the glass, changing its density with sandblasting, carving the passage of light through the glass with pigment and enamels are all part of the magic of working with glass.

The changing and shifting visions of landscape, nebulous flow of light and shade, imbued with the sensations provoked by a sense of place and time, has a strong influence on the visual structure of my work. The starting point of a piece is often a remembered image – the moon casting a green blue glow over the sea at Bolus Head, cool rock, shushing sea-sounds, amber infused sky as I head West, flash blue of a Mayfly on a still silent day. Fleeting images in real time, but in my memory the image is sharply focussed, connected with a particular place, a particular time. The impression stored and enriched by the treasuring of it until it becomes expressed, through colour, light and texture, layered together and worked on, changed, destroyed, and built on again until at least something of that essence is achieved.