Visual Art: Rich counsels in the trees

Elizabeth Magill: Arborescence. Kerlin Gallery, Anne's Lane, South Anne Street, D2. 01 6709093. www.kerlin.ie.  Until 10 July

Elizabeth Magill could not have chosen a more appropriate title than Arborescence for her first exhibition at Dublin's Kerlin Gallery since 1999. Considering the vast majority of the Northern Ireland-raised artist's 20 new works contain an image of trees and other vegetation, the use of a term derived from arbor is instantly tangible to the viewer. However, things are never quite that straight-forward in the work of Magill, with her familiar landscapes reaching far beyond the visual tradition of that style.

Just as the tree is employed by Magill as an apparatus with which to explore her worldly environs, arbor is merely an element of the term arborescence, coined by Jacques Deleuze and Felix Guattari. The word finds its roots, ahem, in the visual representation of a family tree, and was used by the philosophers to describe a unidirectional developmental progression, which through its very nature can never possess the possibility of retroactivity or seemingly random interconnectivity.

It is difficult to believe – if we search for a hierarchical evolution through the exhibition or her previous oeuvre – that Magill has strictly subscribed to this theory, but, at times, a definite progression is apparent. Times of day, seasons and climate all appear as strong influences on the palette and mood in Magill's work, something that becomes hugely apparent when the same scene appears in more than a single work.

The seven figures (sisters, perhaps) in 'Skirt Tails' brave a windy and wintery landscape, while 'Deer Park Clearing' presents the same setting, but this time a calm summer air pervades the scene. These two works mark a new departure for Magill; both are prints, a medium in which she has never ventured previously. And although they number 10 in total, and therefore comprise half the works in the exhibition, they are understandably sidelined compared to the attention afforded to the oil on canvas works.

The colour in the prints is a great deal more vibrant than the canvases, while the bright squiggles, dots and flecks are definitely richer. These differences make the prints stand out more, but something is definitely missing. The loss is easy to recognise and is, without doubt, the bleached, worn aesthetic so beautifully developed by Magill throughout her canvases.

One imagines that the delicate, misty dawn scene of 'Grayscale (1)', with its washed and distressed greenish-purple sky, could not be so understated and hauntingly fascinating in print. This, though, is probably of little surprise, considering the importance of process in the oil on canvas works, with Magill's technique tweaked and perfected over years.

Although constantly a focus, the branches, overhangs and tall conifers in Magill's work often seem to be playing a support role to the atmospheric backgrounds and backdrops. In 'Deer Park (2)' the branches seem to crack the sky, while in 'Roches and Rooks', the sinister air is not created by the trees, but rather by the area they frame and interrupt. In 'Skirt Tales' and 'Deer Park Clearing', it is this, and not the ostensible subjects, that create the feel of the work. The vastness of nature – this Schopenhauer-esque romantic sublime – is the attraction. Arborescence merely leads us there.