Barry McGlashan | Invisible Lines, Immortal Beams

Thresholds, metaphorical and literal, are perhaps the most omnipresent and important motif in Barry McGlashan’s extraordinarily evocative paintings. The works in this exhibition – his first full solo show at Frestonian Gallery – bring us to the edge of lakes, rivers, roads, lead us to the foot of mountains and press us close to the invisible glass barrier of windows.

 

The metaphorical, or rather metaphysical, threshold might be said to be the function of memory itself. Just as a window is both a portal and a barrier, so too can memory be both informative and obstructive. The paintings in ‘Invisible Lines, Immortal Beams’ evoke something of the sometimes beautiful, sometimes maddening sensation of the half-remembered dream – images at once so vivid and yet so close to slipping away entirely. The title itself refers to concepts espoused by the Elizabethan polymath and mystic John Dee, of the world around us being far more unseen than seen.

 

The rooting of paintings in particular places, and with specific memories / narratives behind them is also a common element in McGlashan’s practice, and each of the works in the exhibition have a traceable beginning – whether in personal experience, in the work of other artists, or in the most incidental of imagery. The lake, waterfalls and figures in The Million Year Picnic, for example, are largely drawn from life. Of the work, McGlashan writes:

 

‘On the way back there was a girl sitting on a fence, I don’t know why but I’ve always remembered her - head down, seemingly unimpressed by her surroundings, perhaps she belonged there and it was nothing new. I was reminded of an old Ray Bradbury story which gave the painting its title.

 

In it, we have colonised Mars - a father takes his family up into the hills where the ancient martian cities are. Here, he tells them, they will meet the martians. When they get there the place is ruined and long empty - but he takes them to the canals and they see their faces reflected back. ‘There they are’, he says.

 

I think that’s true, you become the place you are in.’

 

As with all of his works however, the viewer can find a dozen different narratives within the painting that may diverge from the artist’s own memory. That combination of vivid evocation and narrative ambiguity is what imbues McGlashan’s work with such an individual and powerful quality. Each of the works in the exhibition, large or small, contains – to badly paraphrase Whitman - enough multitudes to transport us immediately to another place, another time, and inward half-remembered but deeply felt worlds of our own.