Kathryn Macnaughton | Undercurrents
Kathryn Macnaughton | Undercurrents
October 9 - November 3, 2025
Bau-Xi Gallery | Dufferin
1384 Dufferin Street, Toronto
Opening reception: Thursday, October 9th from 5:30 - 7:30 pm | Artist in Attendance
Watch Artist Talk Series video about Undercurrents
This month, Bau-Xi Gallery | Dufferin is delighted to present Undercurrents, an enthralling exhibition by Canadian abstract painter Kathryn Macnaughton. In this body of work, Macnaughton seeks to explore the interplay between control and chance, resulting in unexpected harmonies and tensions. The resulting paintings aim to create a field of sensation, inviting viewers to engage with the abstraction on a personal and emotional level.
Artist Statement:
My paintings emerge from a process of layered pours and sweeping motions, where colour and form drift between intention and accident.
Each surface becomes a record of movement: pigment flowing, colliding, and pooling into unexpected harmonies and tensions. I am fascinated in the space where control meets chance and where something deliberate turns into something you cannot fully plan for.
A big part of this process involves the use of a squeegee, and although it is expressed by repeated gestures, the outcome is always guaranteed to be different. It is that unpredictability which draws me in. Screen printing also has a strong influence - the layering, transparency, and reiteration. Even though I am not exploring this process in a traditional sense, that same mindset shapes the way I approach my paintings.
I never start with a fixed image. Instead, each layer responds to the one before it. Broad areas of reds, greens, and blue shades shift in density. Sometimes they are opaque, at other times translucent — letting traces of those earlier gestures show through. It creates a kind of rhythm, where the edges of colours between forms are just as important as the forms themselves.
These works explore how abstraction can hold both fluidity and structure. I’m not aiming to depict anything specific, but to create a field of sensation. A space where viewers can drift and make their own associations.
Ultimately, I am chasing that moment where the physicality of the paint shifts into something more intangible - a feeling of time passing, of boundaries dissolving, of being suspended between order and chaos. – Kathryn Macnaughton
Co-director of Bau-Xi Gallery, Kyle Matuzewiski, lends his thoughts on Kathryn Macnaughton's newest exhibition. He writes:
Since Kathryn first joined the gallery, I have seen so many elements of growth in her practice. One of the most pronounced aspects of this is through her ability to embrace chance and the resulting unpredictability in her paintings.
Early on in our time representing her, Kathryn was incredibly focused on a high-level of accuracy where colour, shape and form were concerned – often spending dozens of hours perfecting each piece. Her subject matter drew on a deep interest (and studies) in both illustration and graphic design, incorporating elements of the human figure and how movement could be conveyed.
Over the past couple of years, the abstraction she would often use as a backdrop has now come to the forefront, with the colour palette punched up to eleven. Kathryn is now exploring how the act of painting can express the human figure on canvas and not be reliant on pictorial representations.
It is a truly liberating to see and I look forward to where this direction takes her.
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Kathryn Macnaughton (b. 1985, Toronto) approaches painting with a poetic vision, effortlessly combining abstract expressionism and figurative structures through her bold use of colour, movement, and form. She sees each piece as a journey – one of spontaneity – whereby rhythmic patterns emerge.
The push and pull of the process is one that Macnaughton embraces, trusting in her intuition, while remaining open to the improvisational act of painting. The artist states “I am constantly acting and thinking, with no predefined image in mind, only open-ended possibilities.”
With each splash of paint, or drawn line carving out forms, Macnaughton navigates the terrain of uncertainty. She is willing to push her work to the edge of oblivion, pulling back only when necessary, guided by each interaction: “Painting allows me to turn thoughts into action, expressing emotions in a direct and powerful way.”
Macnaughton’s work has been exhibited in Canada, Europe, and the United States. She has collaborated with Kit and Ace, Collective Arts Brewery and The Gardiner Museum in Toronto. The artist has been represented by Bau-Xi Gallery since 2016 and currently lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal.