Artist Statement:
Barry McGlashan - WAY OUT WEST
27 March - 28 April 2007

Catalogue Introduction

Born and brought up in Scotland where he still lives and works, Barry McGlashan has been endlessly drawn to small town America and the vast landscape in between. His initial trip in 1999 was to Boston, Massachusetts and the east coast with his wife Wendy and then a travel scholarship allowed him to return. McGlashan has since made several extended journeys slowly exploring the interior - through Minnesota & Michigan to Chicago and most recently moving from the Mid-West into the Wild West. He inherited a love of Western movies from his mother and he cites the tense narratives and the panoramic compositions of Sergio Leone's films as a big influence on this collection of work. The paintings of Tucson and the crumbling old film studios pay homage to the past glories of the great westerns.

Without a driving license between them, the McGlashans are unusual in the US and reliant on buses, tours and the assistance of strangers to get them to the places they want to go. The characters they meet along the way add to story of their journeys - from Mike their guide in Flagstaff, also an amateur geologist to taxi driver Kathy Reichs who agreed to drive them out to Tombstone for a nominal fee because she 'gets a kick out of the old place'.

The series of desert paintings of Monument Valley touch on the poignant state of the Native American tribes still with a tenuous grip on their spiritual home. The proud Navajo reduced to touting tourists from 'Chief Yellowhorse Trading Post' yet still enjoying their iron grip on the traffic laws within their self governed reservations. The strange ancient monolithic sandstone mesas put things into context having stood beneath the desert skies for 260 million years.

Tombstone - legendary home of Wyatt Earp captures the affectionate and gentle humour of Barry's work. The mayor had decided to dig up the main street and replace it with dirt again for authenticity - which apparently succeeds but to the chagrin of the shopkeepers whose stores fill continuously with red dust. Here life imitates art when the actor-gunslingers kick back in the 'saloon's at the end of the day complete with Stetsons and spurs and old-timers sit on verandas watching the dramas of the days unfold. McGlashan has a deep seated empathy with these faded, laid back towns where people seem to enjoy the simple pleasure of a glass of lemonade on a hot day and a big sky over their head.

Tara Whelan, 2007




BARRY McGLASHAN

John Martin Gallery, 27th April - 21st May, 2005

It is 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.

John Martin will be holding the first London exhibition of the young Scottish painter, Barry McGlashan from 27 April to 21 May. His exhibitions across Scotland have already met with considerable success since leaving art school in 1996. At a remarkably young age his work has
been purchased for Aberdeen Art Gallery, the Royal Scottish Academy and the Fuller Museum in Boston and it is testimony to his extraordinary talent as an artist that he has achieved this level of recognition with paintings of such assured simplicity.

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 days McGlashan simply walked between towns. Travelling on foot, he says, gets 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.

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.

Anthea Peers, 2005