Project Room: Suns and Daughters: Ces McCully

In this new collection of three original works on canvas, we see McCully’s style take a new direction. Building from her instantly recognisable use of bold colour and interest in internal thoughts, McCully has ventured into a new stylistic world, replete with symbolism and texture.
 
Previously, McCully has used vivid colours to create stylised and geometric typographical pieces, divulging secret, and often brutally honest thoughts. Now we see McCully embrace the folk like characteristics of her work, incorporating religious iconography and human figures into her paintings.
 
McCully's interest in geometric forms and patterns is still clear throughout her work. She depicts figures with square bodies and block like features; with triangular designs often framing the scene. Red tulips are a repeated motif in these works, commonly used to suggest passion, new beginnings, and feminine beauty. The tulips in McCully’s work further her focus on female relationships.
 
The intimate and tender nature of the female relationships portrayed draws the viewer in, as if invited into a private moment. We see the figures holding hands or in conversation. The golden disks around their heads are a clear reference to religious halos, giving her otherwise simple figures the feeling of stature and importance. One work references Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’, reframing her female figures gathered around a table into the context of ‘higher importance’. After moving to the south of France in 2019 and being surrounded by churches, cathedrals, and Catholic symbols on country paths, each tiny village reignited McCully’s fascination with religion. Through her work and research, she examines the impacts that religion has had on ideas of gender and its current role in society.
 

Playing with perspectives, McCully’s scenes are flattened. The blocks of colour making up the figures and settings feel as if they could have been woven into a tapestry. Textile works have been a huge influence on McCully’s earlier abstract works. She describes her piece ‘Roses, Horses and the Getting of Wisdom’ as a bridging piece between these older abstract works and new figurative direction, blending the two styles.

The flattened nature of the pieces allows McCully to lean into their surreal nature, recognisable as moments, but disjointed by the addition of pattern and symbols. The flat backgrounds are reminiscent of early video game graphics, adding an innocence to the pieces, a nostalgia for simpler times. They are playful and inviting.
 
McCully welcomes us into this new stage in her artistic journey and invites us to look deeper at this new body of work, asking what would happen if we were to begin again? What if there were alternatives to our ancient stories?

Email info@rhodescontemporayrart.com to register your interest