Kaye Donachie Song for the Last Act

Kaye Donachie: Song for the Last Act

Kaye Donachie's paintings take inspiration from the lives and works of female figures from the past. Her portraits are not exact depictions but draw on literature, biography and archival imagery of avant-garde 20th century poets, writers, and artists. These women often led unconventional lives and made significant contributions to art and culture, but many remain marginalised figures in history. Donachie reimagines historic women in contemporary painting, and in doing so explores their resonance today.

With their distinct colour palette and use of light, these atmospheric paintings are evocative of a distant time and place, forging an emotional connection between viewer and subject. The title of the exhibition, 'Song for the Last Act', is taken from the title of a poem by American poet Louise Bogan.

The artist has also curated a personal selection of paintings, drawings and prints from our Collection, including works by Édouard Manet and Suzanne Valadon. These speak to her interest in the interface between the real and the imaginary, figuration, and abstraction. Donachie has designed a wallpaper to create a connective tableau as a painterly backdrop for the works and this can be seen in the new wing alongside 'Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris'.

'To me there is a symmetry between painting and poetry. A gestural brushstroke and the line of a poem can be so concise and so complete at the same time! Kaye Donachie

The exhibition includes four new works which were made in response to the domestic space of Pallant House through visualising the architecture within the room as cinematic frames.

These frames, much like a film reel, dissolve one into another as small interludes. Certain elements of the new works echo or mirror one another. She allows different places to come together within her work and uses poetic fragments as titles, to create a sense of an elliptical poem. This is a literary device which is enigmatic, instead of forming an overarching narrative.

'I think about portraiture not in a traditional sense of attempting to create a likeness, but instead to re-imagine a cast of women, portraying them as actors, modernist performers, and non-conformist poets! Kaye Donachie

Kaye Donachie collects literature and imagery of historical and avant-garde cultural figures as subjects for her paintings. Donachie looks to women such as Lee Miller, Claude Cahun or Edna St Vincent Millay for inspiration. These women have a strong sense of identity in their art and literature, but their biographies are often more vague. Donachie uses these gaps in their personal history to invent new spaces and narratives inspired by their art and writing.

'Colour can be quite historical in a sense. A certain pink that can make you think of the Thirties, or a green of the Fifties. When I look at colours I think, 'what kind of feeling does this give me?' I am interested in how colour connects to our emotional memory' Kaye Donachie Painting, for Donachie, acts as an imaginary space.

She works from monochromatic images derived from her personal and archival photography, making preliminary drawings as a reference for her paintings. Donachie uses a muted palette, mixing colours to evoke a particular time or place. This emotive approach enhances the sense of ambiguity within her work.

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