Elizabeth McNeill

In my painting and printmaking practice I pursue the potential of painterly abstraction to expand individual expressionism in my work. I employ varying degrees of figuration which simultaneously conjure and elude interpretation. Scale and mark making, and their relationship to the body, are fundamental to my longstanding exploration of movement, line and spatial tension. In recent works I continue to embrace the raw physicality of gesture whilst exploring depth, balance and extended narrative using negative space and embedded cellular and anatomical motifs. 

My current material investigations examine the concept of moral injury which captures the psychosocial consequences of involvement in and or exposure to morally or ethically transgressive events. The topic is of increasing global concern and an area of active personal research given the prevalence of inequality, systemic social injustice and conflict in the modern world.  

I use repeated cycles of painting, re-sensitisation, additions and deletions and modulated layering in the generation of large-scale paintings, stone lithographs and screen prints. The diversity and complexity embedded in printmaking processes helps me to gain conceptual perspective in my practice. Using labour intensive processes in printmaking I allude to ‘overload’ of the workforce - resultant ‘professional erosion’ is further symbolised in the surface properties of my paintings and print works which reveal cracked and reconstituted segments created by complex layering of pigments; immersion and wash out in ink baths; and bleaching and dispersal effects of acid on stone and paper.