Bearing witness
This story was featured in the November 2018 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art November 2018 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
There was a time, years ago, when artist Abigail McBride felt like she had to pick one genre and stick to it. But the Annapolis, MD, native had one problem: she loved to paint a variety of subjects, from landscapes en plein air to still lifes to figurative works. “I used to angst a little bit about it: Am I a landscape painter? A portrait painter?” says McBride. “People would say, ‘Abigail, you need to pick one and start branding it.’”
But the artist eventually realized that there was really no need to choose. In McBride’s world, painting trees, people, fruits, and flowers not only made sense, it was as vital as the air she breathed. “My energy needs to cycle through all of the genres,” she says. “They each operate at different speeds.” Landscapes require only a few hours to complete when painted en plein air, notes McBride, while her outdoor still lifes generally require multiple painting sessions. Her portrait commissions can also take more time, but ultimately, the artist finds more similarities than differences between the genres. “Having gesture, meaning, and personality in a figure is the same as trees,” she explains. “They have to have character and personality, or they read as generic. And still lifes are so controlled that you have so much room to play with shapes and compositions, and then all those design ideas inevitably flow right back into your figures and landscapes.”
McBride earned her fine-art degree from Westmont College in Santa Barbara, CA, and she also studied at the Cape Cod School of Art, where she picked up the high-key color aesthetics that describe much of her outdoor work today. When a painting calls for it, however, the self-described Cape School colorist can also “operate like a tonalist painter” and tap into her academic training in realism. “I feel like all these technical things I’ve learned are there to free my expression—to give me more options,” says the artist, who has earned recognition from esteemed groups like the Portrait Society of America and Oil Painters of America. For McBride, painting is a way of chronicling and bearing witness to the world around her through her own poetic lens. “While I’m a heavily perceptual painter, I am here to express the spirit of my subjects,” she says, “not to copy them.” —Kim Agricola
representationBenfield Gallery, Severna Park, MD; McBride Gallery, Annapolis, MD; Berkley Gallery, Warrenton, VA; Egeli Gallery, Provincetown, MA; Stewart Gallery, Gloucester, VA; The Station Gallery, Greenville, DE; www.abigailmcbride.com.
This story was featured in the November 2018 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art November 2018 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
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