Elizabeth Magill Explores Memory, Nature, And Landscape Through Dreamlike Imagery

Photo: Elizabeth Magill: Pioneering Artist Bridging Memory And Landscape With Bold Techniques That Redefine The Viewer’s Experience

Balancing Beauty And Tension In Contemporary Landscape Painting

Elizabeth Magill, a renowned contemporary artist, delves into themes of memory and nature, using innovative techniques and textured landscapes to evoke emotions, balance opposites, and explore the human connection to place.

Elizabeth Magill stands as one of the most captivating voices in contemporary art today, an artist whose profound connection to landscape and memory has redefined how we engage with the natural world through painting. Magill’s work is nothing short of poetic—a delicate yet haunting mediation between beauty and introspection, between the external world and the deeply personal. Her ability to blend the tangible and intangible speaks to her mastery of creating imagery that feels both familiar and otherworldly, drawing viewers into a space where nature and human emotion intertwine seamlessly.

What sets Magill apart is not just her technical prowess but her fearless inquiry into the nuances of landscape as a site of wonder, tension, and duality. Growing up in the Glens of Antrim in Northern Ireland—a region of serene beauty shadowed by the complex history of The Troubles—Magill embeds her canvases with layers of meaning, memory, and the ineffable traces of human presence. Her work often feels like a dream paused in motion, evoking a sense of cinematic elegance underscored by subtle discomfort. Through her innovative use of techniques, from fluid paint pourings to photographic overlays, she crafts rich, textured surfaces where light, atmosphere, and mood take on lives of their own.

Engaging Elizabeth Magill in conversation is to witness the mind of a true innovator—an artist unafraid to embrace contradiction and complexity. Her pursuit of balance, achieved through the juxtaposition of painterly beauty and deliberate disruption, mirrors the very landscapes she depicts: places that exist not just geographically but emotionally and psychologically. Magill’s willingness to layer the ephemeral with the unyielding, the serene with the unsettling, results in works that leave a profound impact on all who encounter them. It is our great honor to feature her brilliance in this issue of WOWwART and to delve deeper into her creative process, inspirations, and the philosophies behind her breathtaking oeuvre.

Can you elaborate on how your upbringing in Northern Ireland influences the themes and landscapes depicted in your paintings? 

Before moving to London in the 80’s, I spent my early childhood growing up in a place of scenic beauty called the Glens of Antrim. But it was a period marked in history known as, The Troubles, a brutal conflict which lasted 30 years and still has some legacy today.

Over time the notion of land and subsequently landscape as subject matter became an important

part of my practice. Obliquely my paintings made reference to my early upbringing, and painting landscape became a way for me to convey the visual scenic attractions alongside a darker geopolitical environment.

The term ‘inscape’ has been used to describe your work. How do you define this concept in relation to your artistic practice?

I think it’s about allowing internal thoughts and impressions that affect me to be made external. A lot of my work is set in some sort of outdoor or outside location, maybe a view seen from afar. This distance is both visual and psychological as it gives me some sort of a removed position, perhaps creating a space to be able to think about things.

Your paintings often evoke a range of emotions, from cinematic beauty to eeriness. How do you balance these contrasting feelings in your work?

I like trying to arrive at a balance of opposites,

by having some kind of painterly skill alongside surface disturbance or giving the work a kind of trashed appearance in connection to moments of beauty, so that both approaches can exist simultaneously on the picture plane.

Hopefully this gives my work a shift in perception. Like when it’s viewed from a bit of a distance it can appear tranquil but up close the paint application and process can give it a different reading.

I also like the term cognitive dissonance, which means holding and allowing conflicting ideas to exist simultaneously.

The more unlikely the balance appears, or the more implied tension that gets created, then for me, the more the paining seems to work.

Can you describe the techniques you use to create the rich, layered textures in your paintings? How do you choose which methods to employ for a particular piece?

All works begin by applying layers of thinly diluted and fluidly poured oil paint onto a horizontally placed canvas…this pouring and drying process usually goes on for some time or until I see something that I can visually or emotionally connect with.

Lately and from my photographic archive I’ve been making large silkscreen stencils.  

My images are then superimposed or screened on top of my pre- painted canvas. This is a relatively new approach which has enable me to incorporate my love of photography.

How do film and photography inform your artistic process, and in what ways do they shape your interpretation of landscapes?

For as long as I remember photography has been an integral part of my work.

I see the photographic image as a fixed entity, it’s function within my painting is to introduce something solid and seemingly certain… as opposed to the unpredictable quality that is made from my fluid paint pourings. I guess it’s this duality of intention, I mentioned earlier that intrigues me.

In your work, you often incorporate elements like silhouettes and distant human figures. What is the significance of these elements in relation to the viewer’s experience of your landscapes?

Figures are introduced for compositional reasons, but they appear infrequently because they seem to command too much visual attention, this can be a distraction to the overall dimension of the canvas.

So, I tend to paint them in and then out all the time. But I feel the unpopulated look of my work, still has a strong sense of human presence anyway.