68 Artists Magazine April 2020
gesture—taking a rock and leaving a
mark with it on another rock. When I
walk through this landscape, I’m con-
stantly finding stones on the ground
of beautiful earth colors that make
me want to paint.”
Learning to use pigments requires
a willingness to experiment and con-
duct research. She acknowledges that
her pre-med chemistry background
helps her understand the acid- and
alkaline-based reactions of different
materials, but she insists that such
a background isn’t necessary. More
important is a willingness to make
discoveries and mistakes. She uses
linseed oil and, occasionally, walnut
oil, as a binder for her pigments, and
she laughs about the time she decided
to use olive oil. “I have all these olives
we harvest each year for oil, so it
seemed worth trying.” That was in
2018, and the container of paint is
still wet. She doesn’t think it will
ever firm up to a good painting con-
sistency, let alone dry on a painting,
and she chuckles to herself about how
using such a paint would be a mean
trick to play on a gallery.
As she started using raw pigments,
she became increasingly interested in
their origins. She came to understand
why yellow ochre is fundamental
to the Italian landscape and why
Herculaneum blue is perfect for its
sky. She likes to read about the his-
tory of colors and has discovered how
woad (guado, in Italian) was used and
grown all over central Italy. Woad isa leafy weed that was once pickled in
vats to create dye. When oxidized,
it becomes a glorious blue. Around
the beginning of the 1500s, the vast
exchange of the Silk Road introduced
indigo from abroad, which killed the
woad market. MacGillis, however,
has met a local farmer who’s growing
woad as a sustainable dye for the lux-
ury garment business. Woad doesn’t
mix well with oil so it’s only good for
watercolor, but the artist has a palm-
size set of watercolors she keeps in
her bag for impromptu sketching.
With that white box of paints in her
hand, she remarks, “I think I’m mar-
ried to painting.”
Using natural pigments has
increased MacGillis’ love of paint, but
her ideology and approach to paint-
ing have remained much the same.
Her style of patchy, nuanced color is
highly recognizable. She has always
been interested in plastic space; she
often paints lemons, not because
she particularly loves lemons, but
because of the way the curve of the
fruit and its stem articulate space, as
seen in L’A n g olo d ’Inver no (opposite).
Except for the addition of Terra Nera
Romana, a gray black that perfectly
expresses shadows, even her colors
remain much the same, a celebration
of the Umbrian region of Italy.MATERIAL
MANAGEMENT
MacGillis’ dedication to materials has
deepened her relationships with artsuppliers. She
places orders
with Zecchi, in
Florence, via long
email exchanges
describing the
source of one
pigment or the
problems of another. She also gets
her linen canvas from Zecchi’s but
orders stretcher bars from Fausto
Cantagalli in Rome, a third-generation,
family-run business. They never let
her simply place an order but want to
know what kind of painting she’ll be
doing, as well as where it will be going
and at what time of year. With this
understanding of the conditions the
wood might experience, the supplier
can better prepare it.
She primes the linen surfaces with
gesso, which she has started making
herself, much to the distress of her
family, who open the refrigerator to
find rabbit-skin glue (a gesso compo-
nent) waiting to be used. If kept cool,
she explains, it can last a month—
a period her family endures, carefully
keeping food away from the glue.STUDIO BOUNDARIES
These days, MacGillis’ mornings are
precious—spent in the studio or en
plein air while her son is at school. He
eats lunch with his paternal grand-
parents, who are committed to family
with that particular Italian passion.
By the afternoon, he returns home,
and the artist may still do some work,ABOVE
Serata Calda
oil on linen, 36x71OPPOSITE
L’Angolo d’Inverno
oil on linen,
43⅓ x35²⁄₅