Rolling hills framed by fluffy clouds are no longer the preferred style for a Calgary painter.
In his latest series Wonderland, Gary McMillan enhances his idyllic landscapes with ironic, kooky and unusual images one wouldn’t typically see amidst breathtaking scenery.
Those strolling through his solo exhibit at the Leighton Art Centre the next six weeks are likely to stop in their tracks to ponder his expressive oversized oil paintings.
“The work is complicated,” explained McMillan. “These aren’t depictions that would give you a good feeling. They are more a really loopy and convoluted discourse about culture, wealth, status, privilege, about all kinds of things.”
Landscapes were McMillan’s preference when he began showcasing his artistic talent in the 1980s. He was aiming for the commercial market.
Following a brief hiatus from painting in the early 2000s, McMillan delved back into landscapes, yet he no longer felt fulfilled.
“It just wasn’t giving me the kick I wanted,” he said.
McMillan then began reflecting on his years as a student at the Alberta College of Art and Design when it hit him.
“What I did best was to make whimsical and odd images that were kind of ironic or just strange,” he recalls. “At the time I didn’t quite know what it all meant. I thought, why don’t I capture that. I decided I wanted to make seriously interesting work.”
McMillan began by pondering how people use and misuse the environment and came up with images to portray those thoughts.
“I didn’t want something dark and depressing,” he said. “I wanted the images to be fun and ironic, a bit kooky, very colourful, lots of playfulness with a serious element behind it. I finally said, ‘I’m going to go after it and try to make work that’s really interesting for me to look at and not stop. Just do what really interests me, whether it sells or not who cares.’”
One such painting depicts women on charming bicycles at an ice block in a tulip field faced with various cuts of meat in perfect shapes.
“What do we want in our society?” said McMillan. “We want perfection. It all comes at a huge cost to our environment. There is this price you pay for all this wonderfulness.”
He doesn’t want Wonderland to represent a lecture, but rather offer content embedded in the image, allowing viewers to choose what they see.
“They are more about me and how my mind works than me trying to give someone a message,” he said. “I just throw in things I like to look at like flowers and meat. I throw all that in and you have these underlining meanings behind it all. It’s very complex. It makes the work very interesting for people to look at.”
Wonderland follows McMillan’s last series Fun and Games, which features images of figures doing odd, seemingly risky things in strange settings.
“The art market’s a funny thing,” he said. “There’s these different areas that people try to get into. The contemporary art market generally is abstraction or conceptual art. It’s driven by concepts, it’s not decorative or purely depicted work.”
McMillan’s work has been displayed in various galleries in Calgary and Vancouver, and he’s recently made submissions to other galleries across Canada.
Stephanie Doll, curator at the Leighton Art Centre, said McMillan is one of three solo artists featured in the centre this year and she is excited about introducing the well-known Calgary artist’s unique concepts to the Foothills.
“Usually we exhibit traditional landscapes,” she said. “To have contemporary figures and landscape is really interesting because we get to see the artist do representational painting. He combines people and landscapes to create these collages of beautifully painted pieces. Each piece is kind of metaphor for social issues or environmental issues.”
Doll said the subject matter in the paintings are fantasy based, which will appeal to the centre’s younger viewers.
The Leighton Art Centre often hosts school groups from across the region.
“We see about 10,000 school kids a year,” she said. “We like providing them with an opportunity to learn. There’s hundreds of different ways that you can employ your artistic skills. To do landscape you don’t need to just do a landscape paintings, you can combine all types of themes together.”
Wonderland will be available for viewing from March 12 to April 30.
The Leighton Art Centre is open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
