Small Pictures is an exhibition of small drawings and paintings by renowned Hamilton based painter, Katherine MacDonald. Katherine completed her training in Fine Art at New Brunswick’s Mount Allison University in 1976, and returned to Hamilton to establish her studio. Over a career spanning five decades, MacDonald has exhibited widely, with solo exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the McMaster Museum of Art. Her work is found in private and public collections in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Asia.

It is a particular challenge to work in an intimate format while trying to retain a sense of scale and breadth of vision. It is necessary to use the medium in a concise and simplified manner, to imply rather than describe detail, to see the world in a grain of sand.

This show includes pictures of people and pictures of objects. Done in the studio, in collaboration with the model, portraits are not just a representation of an individual’s physiognomy, they are a living document of human relationships. In sharing space, in the passing of time, human connection unfolds, the nature of which is increasingly important in a period when so much of our experience is instantaneous and mediated by technology.

In addressing the human subject, still life has been a way to further explore our connections in the world. There is a poignancy to objects that have been touched by human hands — clothing that has been worn, a broken cup, a sculpture maquette, used pencils … small portraits of the detritus of our lives.