JUXTAPOZ Magazine – The last days of “Virtues & Vices” in Lily Macrae in New York City
A long short story Proud Virtues and vices, A single exhibition of the Scottish artist Laila Macray On 52 Henry Saint, New York, New York. On an offer until April 27, 2025, Macrae’s action pushes and withdraws human nature – tension between leniency, restrictions, joy, regret, intimacy and distance. Her paintings look like shrapnel from the story, and moments were discovered before something turned, before laughing fades or a secret is revealed.
Inspired by Baroque art, cinematic shots, and transient memories, there is a macrae work in a space between the past and the present, dream and reality. Its numbers appear and dissolve inside layers of oil paint, as if they had almost escaped if they look for a long time. Through a technique that includes the application of the paint and then wiping it, it creates a sense of movement-a passing touch, a continuous overview, blurring a half-night, remembered. Some works radiate warmth and celebration. Others carry a calm discomfort, hinting at what remains below the surface.
Macrae’s approach provides a rare set of technical mastery and emotional depth. Her paintings are not just things of beauty but psychological landscapes, capturing both ecstasy and uncomfortable existence. Each brush blow carries tension and edition, creating works that require vision, poetry, interpretation and interpretation. Its wide cut, like Melody and now, we even move you, and overwhelm you in a cinematic world that looks familiar and mysterious. More intimate works, such as a demonic smile and screaming, distillation of emotion in unique magnetic moments. Whether it is a glow of candlelight on the skin or charged still before confession, Macrae’s work makes you feel that you interfered in a scene – one of them is full of questions and stories that were not answered waiting. At the heart of Macrae, there is magic with the complexities of the human relationship – our desires, our contradictions, the ways we adhere to and abandon.
