Gary McMillan: Outside – Visual Kinetics

Gary McMillan, Scene 53. Courtesy: Fox Jensen McCrory.

Gary McMillan is a patient man. His paintings coalesce atom by atom, their volatile fabric feel perpetually in motion. His energised molecules, flitter in an aroused state, trapped between solidity and dispersion – as if casting around for a mate in the hope of forming a happy compound. And whilst all this ceaseless activity is underway, McMillan deftly loads the brush with another particle of paint – anticipating painterly fusion.

A noir-ish territory has always pulsed away in the background of McMillan’s paintings – from the skewed rear window vistas of a car in flight, to the “triffid-like” treatment of the streetlights.

His visual fluctuation approximates the way that we see but pretend that we don’t. Our minds and senses constantly correcting, making allowances for the inherent instability of our visual world. In this sense Gary McMillan’s paintings lend yet another version of the truth to the fiction of stable vision.