Heather Day and Kathryn Macnaughton Pour
Pour was a two-person exhibition at Joshua Liner Gallery featuring new work by San Francisco, based artist Heather Day and Toronto, based artist Kathryn Macnaughton. On view from January 24 through February 23, 2019, the exhibition brought together two painters whose work embraced abstraction, gesture, and experimentation. United by the process of pouring and manipulating paint, Day and Macnaughton explored color, light, and movement while blurring the lines between intuition and control. Each artist reimagined the legacy of Abstract Expressionism, infusing it with personal meaning and a distinctly contemporary visual language.
Heather Day’s process-driven paintings are informed by her experience with synesthesia, a condition where emotion and sensory experience are perceived as color. Through intuitive mark-making, pouring, scraping, and staining, Day captures the visceral nature of perception and emotion. The works in Pour were completed during a residency in rural upstate New York, where the snowy quiet allowed her to deepen her exploration of sensory connection, memory, and natural rhythms. Day holds a BFA from MICA and has exhibited widely, with collaborations including Google, Facebook, and Lululemon.
It Went Like This, 2018, Mixed media on canvas. 56 x 72 inches (142.2 x 182.9 cm)
Peripheries #2, 2018, Mixed media on canvas, 72 x 56 inches (182.9 x 142.2 cm)
I Read Them All #2, 2018, Mixed media on canvas, 48 x 56 inches (121.9 x 142.2 cm)
Fire Mind, 2018, Mixed media on canvas, 36 x 48 inches (91.4 x 121.9 cm)
Chatham #3, 2018, Mixed media on paper, 30 x 22 inches (76.2 x 55.9 cm)
Chatham #7 , 2018, Mixed media on paper, 30 x 22 in (76.2 x 55.9 cm)
Kathryn Macnaughton blends analog and digital techniques in her layered compositions, which balance fluid abstraction with graphic precision. Starting with gestural washes of paint, she overlays sharply defined shapes sourced from digital collages, achieving a hybrid visual style that bridges painting and design. Her background in illustration and love of vintage color palettes are evident in the bold interplay between soft texture and hard edge. A graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design, Macnaughton has exhibited internationally and collaborated with brands such as Kit and Ace, Collective Arts Brewery, and the Gardiner Museum.
