Barry McGlashan creates luminous oil paintings that are simultaneously fact and fiction. Subtly fusing his own lived experience with a broad range of cultural references—be they from film, literature, music or from the broad historic landscape of art which has come before—McGlashan paints towards a shared emotional experience with the viewer in order to delve into deeper universal truths. It is in these happy fissions where he so celestially renders sublime moments which traverse human experience. McGlashan writes in his artist statement, “I find a vital fragility in all this which allows for the intuitive making of the paintings: just as recollection can’t always be trusted, those liminal spaces between fact and fiction, memory and dream, allow the imagination to bloom.”
McGlashan’s work is undeniably peppered with a feeling of nostalgia, even where it is impossible to find a chronological timestamp. From a literal image of prospectors staring back from the canvas as though captured in a large-format, turn-of-the-nineteenth-century camera lens, to the Instagram-worthy moments like a woman and her dog at the beach, or, so often, the cowboy, an Everyman, galloping through any moment in time. He so beautifully captures people in human moments with no bounds of specific place or time. References to the rich history and timeless appeal of the American West abound in subject matter, transporting the viewer to a dreamy, visceral landscape. Whitman’s “All the pulses of the world’’ are present; mountains loom, waterfalls flow countless vertical feet, nearly cowing their human counterparts where they feature. According to McGlashan, “Painting is a learned language - something shared throughout history that allows you to talk to the past and the future at the same time. It is far more than the sum of its parts. So, in terms of making, the paintings coalesce through a well-practiced form of exploration and finding, perhaps why I find prospecting to be such an eternal subject - we’re all just trying to find something of value in all that dirt.”
McGlashan’s imagery develops fluidly, naturally and over time, as he uncovers his subjects as he works on pieces simultaneously without too much planning. The “mystery,” as he refers to it, that is infused with his process creates a state of mind that guides and fuels his practice. McGlashan paints in a style all his own, in richly layered veils of pigment, the paint quality akin to a dreamy, neo-impressionist handling of washes. McGlashan’s subjects glow as he artfully diffuses light across his compositions. Using simultaneously vibrant and soft tones, he vacillates between more abstract color use and subjects tinged with nostalgia to relay a serene and contemplative mood. McGlashan’s environments, imbued with such dreamy awe, are rendered with potency in his paintings. These works hearken back to Romanticism in their emphasis on the sublime of these expansive and glorious landscapes, as well as the emotional introspection and reaction they provoke. McGlashan uses this terrain not only as the settings and subjects of his works, but also as a tool to connect with the viewer, as each place feels intuitively familiar. “These shared cultural origins often manifest themselves in my work as images of solitary travelers, wandering on the edge of some new-found knowledge or frontier.” McGlashan states, “A certain time and place seems to suit this thematic lure - so I find my world populated with prospectors, drifters, and the lost but hopeful: all dreaming of their Pacific.”
Barry McGlashan was born in 1974 in Aberdeen on the North-East Coast of Scotland. McGlashan studied painting at Gray’s School of Art, graduating in 1996. He taught in the painting department at Gray’s between 1998 and 2005. In 2001, McGlashan was awarded The Alastair Salvesen Scholarship through the Royal Scottish Academy. Through this pivotal scholarship, McGlashan was able to fund 3 months of travel through the United States. This trip became the starting point for several exhibitions based on this and subsequent journeys taking him through the Mid-West, the Southern States and West Coast. In recent years McGlashan’s fascination with exploration and discovery has led him on a journey through historical travelers, writers and, at one point, famous artists in their studios. Examples of his work are held in numerous private and public collections including Aberdeen Art Gallery, Scotland; The Scottish Society, New York, USA; and the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, Scotland. Today, McGlashan lives and works in Aberdeen.