BiographyPast Exhibitions
Available Works
27 Apr - 21 May 2005
It's on trips like these that I appreciate the fact that I don't drive - nothing can beat setting out across an unknown countryside like this on foot.
This exhibition is the result of two journeys Barry McGlashan made to America between 1999 and 2002. The longest of these was a three-month journey through Minnesota, Michigan, Massachusetts and Maine, the result of winning the Alastair Salveson Travelling Scholarship awarded by the Royal Scottish Academy in 2001.
Whilst plane, bus or train provided transport for the longer routes, most of the time McGlashan simply walked between towns. Walking, he says makes you to see things more carefully. A farmhouse takes on greater significance if you approach it over twenty minutes than it would were you hurrying past in a car. Besides, Barry has never driven and even if he had, he adds, driving wouldn't really constitute 'an adventure'. These journeys began early in the day and, with regular sketching stops, would stretch into the early evening. In many places concerned drivers would stop and ask if he was all right, whether he needed a lift or had had an accident.
Barry McGlashan was born in 1974 in Aberdeen but spent much of his childhood on Orkney where his Mother was from. In the rural communities of the Mid-West he discovered a life and landscape that was remarkably similar. Where the population is small, the signs of life take on a greater resonance: buildings, roads and cars have a presence that would be lost in a city or town. Yet the similarities apply equally to the people he met: the quiet good humour, the politeness, interest and kindness shown to him was something he had experienced in Orkney. They are aspects of his adventure that have become only clearer in his mind in the two years of studio work since his return from America. The deep affection for the Mid-West towns, the countryside, the people and their homes comes across clearly in these paintings.
It is an enormous pleasure to hold the first London exhibition for Barry McGlashan. Since leaving art school in 1996 his exhibitions have met with considerable success across Scotland and already, at a remarkably young age, his work is already in the public collections of Aberdeen Art Gallery, the Royal Scottish Academy and the Fuller Museum in Boston. It is testimony to his extraordinary talent that he has achieved this recognition with paintings of such quiet simplicity.
