ETERNAL RETURN – Background to the exhibition
Paintings begun in remote and abandoned places – at an abandoned village in Aragon, Spain, the remote mountains of Molise, Italy, disused cottages in Dumfriesshire– return to a place of imagination to consider memory, displacement, romantic notions of ruin.

Painting restructures what I see, how I remember. I often work outdoors to experiment, where it is necessary to improvise. Walking with my materials to remote countryside, abandoned places, I want to be surrounded by nature, by a place with a “past”.

Developing work in the studio, colour, composition, found imagery help me locate visual tensions, contradictions, that fragment and reveal. The paintings become remembered patterns of time and place, a form of dreaming.

BIOGRAPHY
MICHELE MARCOUX lives and works in Edinburgh, Scotland. She grew up as an identical twin in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, living in California and New York City before moving from Brooklyn to rural Perthshire, Scotland in 1990. Michele received a BA Fine Art (cum laude) from Bennington College, Vermont, and the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA. She completed a Masters of Letters Fine Art Practice (with Distinction) at Glasgow School of Art in 2016

In 2019 Michele was one of 6 international artists selected for the Taking Time/Prendendo Tempo residency at The Museum of Loss and Renewal, Collemacchia, Italy. In 2021 she was supported by Creative Scotland for, Creating a Pandemic Imaginary, a residency at MERZ Gallery, Sanquhar Scotland. In 2021-22 she was selected for Ecologies of Displacement, a British Council/Creative Scotland funded international residency and collaboration between Scotland and Pakistan. She exhibits her work in Scotland and London.