Nassau, Bahamas - Opposite aspects are both true — this is a paradox. Documenting Susan Moir Mackay’s exploration into contradictory aspects of good and bad, perfection and imperfection,  pain and healing, Paradox journeys beyond the illusions of polar perceptions into deeper shapes of unity and commonality in a new art show opening Friday, 20 November 2009 at 6 pm at PopOp Studios Center for the Visual Arts in Nassau, Bahamas.

Focusing on the mandala — an ancient tool of meditation representing wholeness, and traditionally holding a circular pattern within a square — Mackay’s art reflects both the alchemist’s interest in transforming opposites: base metals into gold, or squares into circles, as well as psychologist Carl Jung’s symbolic view of the square as conscious, logical thought form, and the circle as the creative, intuitive, feminine essence. Mackay’s work uses mandalas as a ground for both aspects to exist in a potential harmony, initially  questioning the essential nature of both, while searching for the metaphorical center point of unification.

Her mixed media pieces combine the raw elemental nature of physicality, intriguing and thought-provoking form, and the illumination of spirit, to seek the order in chaos, the perfection in imperfection, the beauty within the ugly, and the unity within the disparate.

Artist Susan Moir Mackay sits before one of her pieces for Paradox called, "Veil 1". Her solo exhibition, Paradox will open at PopOp Studios in Nassau on Friday, November 20th. Photo: Elsbeth Mackay

Susan Moir Mackay is a conceptual artist with a B.A. HONS degree from the Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland. Mackay was a featured artist in the 2006 and 2008 National Art Gallery of The Bahamas Annual Exhibitions, and has also exhibited in Sugar at PopOp Studios (2008), as well as numerous group shows in Nassau and Freeport, where she held her own one woman show and curated and produced the 2007 Ecstatic Shadows exhibition. She is an impassioned advocate of art and has a deep abiding belief that art benefits individuals and communities. Mackay has traveled extensively, observing art in all its forms and has invested much of her time to art education projects. Mackay is also founder of the ST ART S organization celebrating contemporary art in Grand Bahama. 

Paradox will debut at John Cox’s PopOp Studios at 26 Dunmore Avenue, Chippingham, on Friday, 20 November 2009 from 6 - 9 p.m.  The show will continue through December 19, 2009. The public is invited. For more information call 322-7834 or visit www.popopstudios.com

View a video interview with Susan by B2B