There is something simultaneously haunting and beautiful about the paintings of Stephen Mackey. His surreal, fairytale-like scenes depict women with pale, porcelain skin; children with fantastical elements like bat and butterfly wings; hybrid human-animal creatures and more. Evoking the aura of 17th- and 18th-century European art, Mackey’s work feels as though it comes straight from an old dusty storybook, with a few tales perhaps a little too dark for children.
Nocturnal Children, oil on panel, 24 x 20"
“I think the style I use for my painting is inherently otherworldly,” says the artist. “I taught myself to paint using the work of 17th- and 18th-century painters as a model. Their realism simulates reality rather than recording it like a camera, creating a kind of analogue of the world which, I always think, looks so self-contained that it’s dreamlike and remote…Conceptually speaking, I almost never work from the top down. I begin with some compositional convention—portrait, figure in a landscape, etc.—and then add things until it begins to suggest a narrative.”
Sleep all Summer, oil on panel, 16½ x 23"
Various books, sculptures and other treasures that fill the studio of Stephen Mackey.
The solo exhibition, Nocturnal Children, will be held at New York City-based Arcadia Contemporary in the new year.
“It’s nocturnal in the sense of being separate from our diurnal world,” Mackey explains of the show’s title. One of the featured paintings, bearing the same title, is a surreal nocturne of a winged little girl on a carriage being pulled by a dapper horse man.
“The eponymous painting shows a small group of galivanting mutant children, probably inspired by the strange cavalcades that pass through the stories of [Gothic and horror writer] Sheridan Le Fanu,” says Mackey. “They are exotic characters, and not part of your world.”
Boucherette, oil on panel, 15 x 11"
A Winter Girl Dresses for Spring, oil on panel, 18 x 18"
The appearance of porcelain skin, especially evident in pieces like Sleep All Summer—depicting a sleeping woman wrapped in sheer fabrics with velvet maroon curtains surrounding her—is largely due to the flesh areas of Mackey’s paintings being far lighter than his dark backgrounds. Things like clouds, white fabric and skin are underpainted with heavy white acrylic, illuminating them from beneath and creating a smooth, delicate glow. In A Winter Girl Dresses for Spring, a young woman with luminescent skin examines her appearance in an ornate, silver hand mirror. Her deep, crimson lips, red nails and rosy cheeks punctuate the paleness of her skin. Atop her head is a crown of white flowers, the thorns creating delicate ripples of blood that run down her face.
The World and the House, oil on panel, 17 x 22"
Explore these paintings and others during Nocturnal Children, which runs from January 11 to February 2 at Arcadia Contemporary in the Soho District of Manhattan. —
Arcadia Contemporary 421 W. Broadway, New York, NY 10012 (646) 861-3941 • www.arcadiacontemporary.com
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