Gillian Carnegie

Yellow Wall

2006

Gillian Carnegie’s subject matter, viewpoint, palette, scale, and handling of paint change dramatically from work to work. Though many of her subjects recur, the way they are painted rarely does, as one of the artist’s primary motivations is to keep pushing her craft, often into areas where she feels less than comfortable or secure. Her shifting style could be explained as an excavation of memory using various methods to picture a range of times and places, suggesting the instability of perception. Yellow Wall, a garden scene in pale yellow tones that suggest a faded vintage photograph, is painted in a clumpy style that went out of fashion in the late 1960s, perhaps tying the image to a deeper stratum of the memory bank.

Gillian Carnegie (b. 1971, Suffolk, England; lives and works in London)
Yellow Wall, 2006
Oil on canvas
91 x 63 in.
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Purchased with funds provided by the Acquisition and Collection Committee