In the Studio with Christine MacDonald
By Jackie Lee | Sun Fine Arts
Visitors to Christine MacDonald’s studio may be astonished to meet the shy, petite woman with the brogue of a Scottish lass; she is, after all, the painter of very large canvases that require quite a lot of muscle to move around. That’s why she has a huge multi-level studio with a vaulted ceiling and made-to-measure canvas tracks tucked into the wall. Her artworks are recognizable in the unique drips that made them so popular, although that’s not all she paints. Arrayed on the walls are smaller paintings of people, birds, wildlife, and abstract landscapes.
Her studio in the hills of western Sonoma is a favorite with visitors on Art Trails every year, both those committed to adding to their collection of her paintings and new buyers. “As artists, we work in isolation and we’re close to the work, but having fresh eyes tell you what they see and feel is gratifying,” Christine says.
Does that inform what she paints next? “No,” she laughs. “I’m far too selfish for that. When I talk about my art, you could almost say something totally different every day because it comes from an emotional place and it’s never completed until I see that emotion reflected back to me—or a different one, as the case may be. What I say is, today might be different tomorrow because it’s ever involving.”
Do you have an idea when you begin? “A lot of my work comes from childhood memories or poetry. I read a lot. A line of a song can trigger a new vision for me. But as you know, whatever you begin with is never what you end up with because of that magical thing that happens with you and the paint. Ideas come from different places, sometimes I just wake up in the morning and something’s in my head. I come to the studio and see what develops. It changes frequently, though.”
What do you want people to experience in your art? “If I try to sum up, I’d have to say there’s a sense of mystery and yearning in my paintings. If you think about why people create (and we all do that for different reasons), in a sense we are creating another world. The way I grope for a meaning is the way I paint. The world is mysterious and unknown to us, and I think that’s one reason I use creatures and birds a lot in my art.”
Do outside influences bear what you do? “Yes, some paintings were a direct response to the Sonoma fires. I painted them when I returned to the studio after being evacuated from the 2017 fire. We were spared even though the fire came to the edge of the creek. The night the fire started, I had painted an almost prophetic painting of a white bird I had been working on for about a week. It was a shocking and frightening time, but on the other hand this is an incredible place to live.”
Christine was born on an island only 12 miles long off the coast of Scotland. “The sea permeates recurring images of the ocean and boats in my work,” Christine explained. “They are metaphorical, universally as well as personally, both epic and mundane, embracing physical and psychological journeying and exile.”
She summarizes her passion: “Painting, for me, is an ongoing search between the known and unknown, seen and unseen. Whether it is a bird in flight, or a figure moving or focused in stillness, my hope is that there will be a moment when a spark of life occurs. Painting is an obsession—I think about it even when I’m not in the studio.”
