Jacky Winter is pleased to present Under Nightshade by Kat Macleod – a collection of new works on linen.

Under Nightshade is an exploration into deep sleep and the botanical world. As unpredictable and ominous as the flowering Nightshade plant, sleep can be precious, nourishing and regenerative, whilst at other times broken, nightmarish and deadly.

Plants and flowers provided Macleod with eternally inspiring shapes and forms to draw and paint. The result is a collection of sometimes vibrant, sometimes melancholic, botanic pieces. Hidden sleeping figures, absorbed in the surrounding plants, explore the enchanting world of slumber. Embroidered threads start and stop without reason and compositions emulate nonsensical dream fragments.

The female form is a subject I am familiar with and often draw, experimenting with line drawings of limbs, pose and shape. Eyes opened, eyes closed. Awake and asleep. I was inspired by the botanical world as a means of expressing how sleep can be beautiful, calm, quiet, picturesque, unreal, unusual, unpredictable, weird, dark, wild and elusive.

Each one-off piece is a digital collage printed onto 100% linen, stretched and then further customised with paint, embroidery and beading. Linen, the soft tactile fabric we use for our blankets and bedding, was the perfect canvas. To extend the theme further, Macleod has created a set of pillow cases covered in dreamy botanic-inspired illustrations, printed and produced locally featuring embroidered elements, available in a limited edition of 50.

Kat Macleod is a Melbourne-based illustrator, graphic designer and the Co-Director of Melbourne design studio Ortolan. Macleod has a distinctive style often working in with multimedia on paper embellished with fabric, beads, sequins and custom elements. Kat’s illustrations have appeared in Chinese Vogue, Numero Tokyo, The Age, Delicious Magazine and Vogue Entertaining & Travel. Working across a range of commercial and fine art projects, her client list features Heide Museum of Modern Art, Myer, Collette Dinnigan, The Australian Ballet, Bonds and Third Drawer Down. She has also illustrated several local and internationally released books: Bird (2002), The Cocktail (2005), Sequins & Sequence (2010), and Michi Girl’s Like I Give a Frock (2008), What on Earth Are You Wearing? (2010) and Le Shop Guide (2013).