CRITIC’S CHOICE

WHEN Patricia Cain won both the Threadneedle Prize and the Aspect Prize for painting in 2010, what struck me about her work was the painstaking eye for structural detail in buildings and objects. It was as though, in looking at the way they were constructed, she was working out the never-ending puzzle of life itself.

A subsequent exhibition in Glasgow’s Kelvingrove examined the construction phase of Zaha Hadid’s Riverside Museum and was widely praised. Her latest body of work, Seeing Beyond the Ordinary, opened last weekend at Milngavie’s Lillie Gallery.

The genesis of the show was a three-month residency in 2013 at the St Andrews home of abstract artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912-2004) before it was sold. There has been a sea change in Cain’s work which hits you the minute you walk into the first space in the Lillie.

In the centre a large section of a leafless tree hangs from the rafters. All around are works which depict the natural world in infinitesimal detail. Four large pastel panels hang side by side, densely populated by foliage. It’s as though you are inside the forest. There is still a definite structure but it is much more free-slowing.

Other collage works are pared-back and blocky; a nod to Barns-Graham without following slavishly in her wake. Displaying them next to examples of Barns-Graham’s boldly confident abstract prints invites favourable comparison.

Cain, a former lawyer, has always been driven by a need to communicate with the viewer. The teacher in her wants them to engage with the creative process of an artist who switches between representational and abstract artworks. I very much liked her recreation of her studio walls, which gives a deeper insight into how she strives to create simplicity from complex subjects.