Amy MacKay’s abstract oil paintings explore the shifting relationship between memory, time, and collective experience. Born in Sonoma, California, in 1985 and now based in Los Angeles, MacKay draws inspiration from literature, folklore, theater, and the ways people remember shared experiences differently. After earning her BA from Bard College in 2007 and MFA from the University of California, Irvine, in 2018, MacKay developed a research-driven practice that brings collaborative performance into conversation with painting. She stages events with people in her life, often drawing from existing stories and myths, and transforms these temporary gatherings into paintings shaped by memory rather than straightforward documentation. Through layered surfaces, fragmented imagery, and expressive color, MacKay creates works that hover between recognition and abstraction, inviting viewers to consider what remains of an experience after it has passed.

“What is the interaction between past and present?”

In her Los Angeles studio, MacKay begins with experiences she has helped create and stage, using written accounts, photographs, interviews, and other documentation to reconstruct events through paint. Her process is iterative and physical: she builds up layers of oil paint, then wipes, removes, and reworks them, allowing images to emerge and recede. Rather than attempting to preserve a single definitive version of an event, MacKay embraces the distortions that occur when memories are shared and retold. Her paintings often retain only fragments of their original narratives, with color, gesture, and atmosphere carrying the emotional weight of what can no longer be fully recovered.

This approach connects her interest in collaborative storytelling with the fundamental uncertainty of memory, treating painting as both a record of an event and a new experience in its own right.

“Each image is made and destroyed repeatedly, so that the surface becomes a site of performed forgetting.”

In Where the Best Bog Rosemary Grows (2024), MacKay draws from her larger body of work inspired by Marina Carr’s play By the Bog of Cats, a contemporary reimagining of the myth of Medea. The project grew out of a collaborative reenactment of the play, which MacKay staged with participants and documented through multiple perspectives. Rather than offering a literal illustration of the performance, the resulting paintings translate its characters, atmosphere, and emotional tensions into painterly fragments.

Through the interplay of abstraction, layered surfaces, and partially recognizable imagery, MacKay explores the instability of narrative and the difficulty of capturing a shared experience in a single image. The painting becomes a threshold between the original performance and its remembered traces, allowing the story to persist even as its details shift.

MacKay continues to investigate the relationship between performance, documentation, and the elusive nature of memory. Her 2026 solo exhibition, Neither Land Nor Water, at la BEAST gallery in Los Angeles extends her ongoing exploration of By the Bog of Cats through new paintings that move between representation and abstraction. Working with thin layers of oil paint, erasure, and shifting forms, she continues to question how images preserve experiences while simultaneously transforming them. The exhibition is on view from September 19 through October 31, 2026.

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Official Website - https://amymackay.com/