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“When the canvas frays

in the curragh of thought

and a stain of ocean

blackens beneath you,

may there come across the waters

a path of yellow moonlight

to bring you safely home.”

John O’Donohue

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Nocte Luna is an ode to McGregors’ new home in Tasmania. Although heavily influenced

in her painting style by JMW Turner, Caspar David Friedrich and Mark Rothko for the way

they distilled an emotional experience, the architectural language of reductive,

geometric abstraction her art practice was based in was shaped by her life lived in the

urban/suburban milieu. Relocating to regional Tasmania and living closer the the natural

environment has had a profound effect on her paintings. Whilst simplification is still a key

component of her work, the creation of dynamic tension through the considered interplay

of light and dark demonstrates her ongoing interest in creating opportunities for

psychological engagement whilst celebrating the wild beauty of her new home.

Working in a narrow tonal range she paints atmospheric works that deny clarity. Passages

of obscured, distant or fading light bring a quiet relief to the settling dark. Horizon lines are

defined only by their ambiguity and vertical streaks mediate our view as if read through a

screen or a memory, all in an effort to capture the elusive sublime.

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