Marie Hagerty
New works 2005
Tim Olsen Gallery
30 Aug - 17 Sept 2005
Marie Hagerty is a painter of elegant abstract canvases that embrace qualities of design Tomescu rejects out-of-hand. Hagerty’s palette is restricted to red, black and white but within those self-imposed boundaries she plays with shadows to create the illusion of three-dimensional forms. The planes in a typical painting such as Red Duette or Rival Method II seem to overlap like sculpted cut-outs. At best, this method has an ambiguity that keeps everything delicately balanced on the verge of some more precise recognition.
Hagerty’s paintings all feel like extreme close-ups. If one could pull back, motion-picture style, each work might be revealed as a detail of a larger scheme. Since that option is not available, the viewer has to take each canvas for what it is: a game with surfaces, where sensuous, billowing forms alternate with razor-sharp edges to tantalise the eye and the mind.
- John McDonald
Extract from Sydney Morning Herald, Spectrum, September 2007.