Mary Horn acknowledges the influence of two of New Zealand's best-loved artists, Colin McCahon and Ralph Hotere, in her exhibition 'What the Window Says' She paints window forms that convey a spiritual intensity.
Mary Horn uses windows both as a subject and as a physical material. The series of "White Window" paintings are a set of oil sketches, painted with brio and showing a window that is opaque, rather like an eye milky with a cataract. This blind sight is a frustrating symbol: the more we look the less we see. More interesting are those works inserted into old window frames. Here Mary Horn boldly traverses territory walked by the likes of Ralph Hotere, Colin McCahon and others. One frame even contains a "Stations of the Cross". And in 'Faultline' she has achieved a convincing synthesis. Her window panes are occluded by panels of paint rather than painted glass, and the fractured landscape is episodic and impressionistic in the manner of the "Northland Panels'
Otago Daily Times
Mary Horn acknowledges the influence of two of New Zealand's best-loved artists, Colin McCahon and Ralph Hotere, in her exhibition 'What the Window Says' She paints window forms that convey a spiritual intensity. In some of the works, Horn has used beautiful wooden window frames discardeed from the old Teschemakers building before the fire. Two of the frames essentially divide each work into five panels. In 'North Otago Late Summer Harvest' the landscape is depicted in verious moods. The central panel shows the landscape in darkness highlighted by a golden light. In some works, Horn makes use of long thin lines of paint that seem to have been squeezed directly from the tube which adds an appealing textural element
Otago Daily Times
