SCENE 57, 2024 ACRYLIC ON LINEN 29.5 X 39 CM
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SCENE 56, 2024 ACRYLIC ON LINEN 60 X 80 CM
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SCENE 62, 2024 ACRYLIC ON LINEN 90 X 120 CM
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SCENE 61, 2024 ACRYLIC ON LINEN 60 X 80 CM, SCENE 56, 2024 ACRYLIC ON LINEN 60 X 80 CM
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"Some say they see poetry in my paintings; I see only science." Georges Seurat
"Some say they see poetry in my paintings: I see only science fiction." Gary McMillan
Of course, Gary didn’t say that, but he might of. Painting negotiates a line between science and fiction, between material fact and illusion, between reason and irrationality and McMillan’s paintings wilfully embrace these contradictions, as did Seurat. Their desire to atomise both the process of making and the action of seeing acknowledges the science of sight and the faith one places in vision.
Indeed “having a vision” is necessarily a concession to faith over rationality – making a painting, much the same… particularly using pointillism. Seurat’s 19th century proto-pixelation of the picture plane declared his stated commitment to method over any other intention, yet he acknowledged the potency of a visual world revealed by the play of light – “let’s go and get drunk on light again – it has the power to console”, less a statement of a scientist than a romantic.
Were it 1884, McMillan might well have packed this beret, easel and tiny brushes and joined Seurat on a hazy summer day in Paris, but 140 years on McMillan finds himself victim of a newer seductive chromoluminarism – cinema. His new suite of paintings City in Progress, all titled ‘scene’ in a further reference to cinema, break a little more with this narrative bind and allow for the possibility that the methodology he and Seurat employ(ed) leaves sufficient gap for the unexpected, the magical (aka ‘art’) to get in.
There is no doubt that McMillan looks at the world through a personal viewfinder, cropping, refracting and splicing frames when desired. What is consistent across each of the paintings is the agitated, atomic field of visual data that fragment and cohere like our memory, painting a picture that is equal part fact and fiction with a garnish of fantasy. There will always be traces of evasion in McMillan’s work, a kind of “on the run” escapism that insinuates that neither vision nor the highway offer complete security. AJ 2024
"Some say they see poetry in my paintings; I see only science." Georges Seurat
"Some say they see poetry in my paintings: I see only science fiction." Gary McMillan
Of course, Gary didn’t say that, but he might of. Painting negotiates a line between science and fiction, between material fact and illusion, between reason and irrationality and McMillan’s paintings wilfully embrace these contradictions, as did Seurat. Their desire to atomise both the process of making and the action of seeing acknowledges the science of sight and the faith one places in vision.
Indeed “having a vision” is necessarily a concession to faith over rationality – making a painting, much the same… particularly using pointillism. Seurat’s 19th century proto-pixelation of the picture plane declared his stated commitment to method over any other intention, yet he acknowledged the potency of a visual world revealed by the play of light – “let’s go and get drunk on light again – it has the power to console”, less a statement of a scientist than a romantic.
Were it 1884, McMillan might well have packed this beret, easel and tiny brushes and joined Seurat on a hazy summer day in Paris, but 140 years on McMillan finds himself victim of a newer seductive chromoluminarism – cinema. His new suite of paintings City in Progress, all titled ‘scene’ in a further reference to cinema, break a little more with this narrative bind and allow for the possibility that the methodology he and Seurat employ(ed) leaves sufficient gap for the unexpected, the magical (aka ‘art’) to get in.
There is no doubt that McMillan looks at the world through a personal viewfinder, cropping, refracting and splicing frames when desired. What is consistent across each of the paintings is the agitated, atomic field of visual data that fragment and cohere like our memory, painting a picture that is equal part fact and fiction with a garnish of fantasy. There will always be traces of evasion in McMillan’s work, a kind of “on the run” escapism that insinuates that neither vision nor the highway offer complete security. AJ 2024
