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Artist Uses Wood Scraps to Visualize a Dynamic Explosion of Color and Shapes

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Breaking with purpose—this is how New Zealand artist Louise McRae describes her creative act. Selecting found wood, cutting it, and painting it before it's molded into dynamic assemblages, McRae's work demonstrates an explosive spirit. By fitting together the broken down wood into art that is perfectly imperfect, McRae makes sense of chaos—or rather harnesses it to her advantage. “I have always broken things by accident, now I was breaking with purpose, it felt good, my response to the world of ‘perfection,' a world that has been beyond my ability to master,” McRae explains.

The natural material is often painted, but the artist does vary her technique by occasionally charring or silver foiling the wood. The color and texture only serve to enhance the forms McCrae creates within each assemblage. Undulating waves embrace large and small squares or sharp, straight lines shoot out from a forceful radius—each piece creating a unique sensorial reading by the spectator. McCrae, whose work is available via Seed Gallery and 33 Gallery, relates her work—including her choice of recycled materials—back to the Cubist movement. “Using recycled materials harks back to the practices of the Cubists, with their characteristic distortions and attempts to represent time, space, and motion within an artwork; the resulting works swell with movement and color.”

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Louise McRae: Website | Facebook | Instagram
via [Colossal]

All images via Seed Gallery.

Jessica Stewart

Jessica Stewart is a Contributing Writer and Digital Media Specialist for My Modern Met, as well as a curator and art historian. Since 2020, she is also one of the co-hosts of the My Modern Met Top Artist Podcast. She earned her MA in Renaissance Studies from University College London and now lives in Rome, Italy. She cultivated expertise in street art which led to the purchase of her photographic archive by the Treccani Italian Encyclopedia in 2014. When she’s not spending time with her three dogs, she also manages the studio of a successful street artist. In 2013, she authored the book 'Street Art Stories Roma' and most recently contributed to 'Crossroads: A Glimpse Into the Life of Alice Pasquini'. You can follow her adventures online at @romephotoblog.
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