Sensing and Feeling

The ‘Lightscapes’ Paintings of Kerri McGill

Kerri McGill’s ‘Lightscapes’ paintings are a collective body of work that convey strong emotions and feelings, often inspired by nature, memories, and personal experiences. She aims to translate these feelings into her art, using abstract forms and vibrant colours to evoke sensations rather than simply representing visual reality. Her paintings are less about depicting specific scenes and more about capturing the emotional essence of a place or experience. They express her personal values, empathy and love.

In general, sensing refers to the act of perceiving through the five senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch). It includes the ability to perceive subtle details and practical information from the external world. Feeling, in contrast, often relates to emotional responses and how one experiences and processes emotions, both their own and those of others. It is a way of making decisions based on values and personal connections.

I am reminded of two quotes that describes feeling in painting. One is by Kazimir Malevich, and the other one is by Joan Mitchell. These quotes could directly refer to Kerri McGill’s ‘Lightscapes’ paintings. “To the Suprematist the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling.” (Kazimir Malevich), and “People will never understand what we are doing if they can’t feel.” (Joan Mitchell). Kerri McGill’s fluid and eloquent paintings describe the feeling of a space which is a vehicle to express and understand her own existence, linking feeling and painting as essential to life.

Kerri McGill’s ‘Lightscapes’ paintings are poetic expressions of feeling. They evoke sensations and are not purely visual experiences; they engage the viewer’s senses and emotions. The movement of her brushstrokes, the interplay of colours, and the overall compositions create a sense of atmosphere and mood that viewers can connect with on a visceral level. Her approach to painting is deeply personal and honest. She aims to express her feelings authentically, even when they are complex or challenging. Her bold use of colour and form reflects her commitment to conveying her inner world.

The ‘Lightscapes’ title for this body of work is instructive in the sense that these paintings are not only about what can be necessarily seen or understood, but what ‘is about to emerge or be seen;’ in the yearning for something beyond the tangible, the physical and even the sensory experience. They evoke a feeling or belief in a cosmic or divine whole, to a sense of connection that has meaning and purpose, encompassing aspects like the soul, spirit, or a higher power. It is about recognising that there is more to existence than the material world.

The phrase ‘light is love’ is applicable to these ‘Lightscapes’ paintings. It generally signifies a connection between positive, uplifting emotions and spiritual enlightenment. It often represents a focus on kindness, compassion, and the idea that love can illuminate one’s path or perspective. The best of these immersive and colour saturated ‘Lightscapes’ paintings symbolise the transformative power of love illuminating our lives like light illuminates the world. In a flow on sense from earlier work, they refer to the experience of perception and non-perception on the path to transcendence and an interconnectedness with all things.

This personal voyage of exploration and discovery as exemplified in the ‘Lightscapes’ paintings has further released her creative vision. She has entered the ‘four spheres,’ which in a spiritual context, refers to different levels of reality or aspects of existence, including the formless realm, different realms of consciousness, or distinct areas of responsibility within a spiritual community (the artistic community and the viewing public in her case). In Mahayana Buddhism, the four spheres are infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, and neither perception or non-perception. The spheres represent holistic wellness and include the psychological, spiritual and physical realms.

Kerri McGill states on her website that “My paintings look at our shared human experience and explore our place in the greater scheme of things. They offer a visual space to explore and re-examine our unique connections to the world around us.” The ‘Lightscapes’ series of paintings inhabit this exploratory visual space and by dint of their power to transform our understanding of the objective visual world, take the viewer within to consider, re-examine, reflect, and engage with the re-imagined world without.

David Mealing

Retired Museum Director

Te Whare Whakaaro o Pito-one (The Story House of Petone) Petone Settlers Museum

New Zealand Cricket Museum