Above: Kirsty McLean, The Swimmer, 2023. Oil on canvas, 80 x 80 cm
The works of New Zealand-based artist Kirsty McLean demand a double-take, and their illusory qualities
have increasingly been drawing attention to the artist’s preeminent skill with a brush.
By using Escher-like tessellation combined with an intimate understanding of analytical cubism, the artist’s sculptural forms that seem to hover above their pictural plane breach the boundary between 2D and 3D, recalling Modernist preoccupations with dynamism and movement through time.
McLean manipulates light and shadow with finesse, dextrously warping the viewer’s perspective and pushing the boundaries of her medium. Surprisingly, given the aesthetic and conceptual cohesion of her practice, the artist has only recently returned to artmaking after having spent 23 years living and working in Japan and Borneo. In that short time however she has been conferred the Highly Commended prize sponsored by Arts Whakatāne by the 2023 Molly Morpeth Canaday Award, as well as exhibited at Puke Ariki, New Plymouth in their Home Work Maunga Auaha: Taranaki Art 2024 exhibition and at Percy Thomson Gallery, Stratford in their group exhibition Yours Truly X.