Old Souls on New Canvas

Kaye Donachie’s miasmic oil paintings flit between control and laxity, historical truth and wistful reverie. In past works such as Every Mornin' Our Love is Reborn (2004) and Now is Forever Lasting, Constant in the Mind (2003) she has reimagined personal idols from the 1960s—hippies and rebels including Daria Halprin and the residents of commune Monte Verita— as groups of hopeful youths, squatting in caves or lolling by the sea. Lost to history but making their forceful personalities immediate, these characters shift in and out of focus as Donachie alternately buries them under flurries of dark brushstrokes or bathes them in a radiant, warm light. Her new paintings—a series of portraits of countercultural figures from the early 20th century—are being exhibited from February 27 at Maureen Paley, London.