That Howling Infinite: Barry McGlashan
The possibilities of a blank, white canvas are endless. Then one idea,
one big-bang moment, a lot of activity and energy and the basic
elements of the work emerge, the journey begins. The rest is just time
and subtle change: you have to lose ideas you love along the way but
others emerge and steer you in a new direction. Ideas only come when
you’re approaching the edge of things and as an artist you then have
the liberty to make sense of them in any way you choose. Stories often
unfold in many directions all at once, creating a thread that runs through
several different pictures; they might even reveal hidden meanings that
can be explored or tucked away and left hidden. Always, you try and
keep a constant state of wonder and the feeling of some new discovery.
There is no real beginning or end to the work; it’s just a continuing
journey. You rely on a deep well of ideas to take you further on, closer to
the edge of the world, through the maelstrom and what Herman Melville
described as ‘that howling infinite’. The paintings imagine those
journeys where humanity is pitted against the great forces of nature:
travellers trying to make sense of what lies ahead, the prospector looking
for fortune, the naturalist on a distant shore or the Bounty’s mutineers
escaping to the edge of the earth in their search for paradise. For all
of them, for all of us, the marvel is the view into infinity which these
journeys afford, the universe glimpsed through a break in the clouds
or the chance encounter with a comet’s endless voyage; or through
those internal journeys: secrets decoded in a mathematician’s scribbled
formulae or an artist sitting in contented solitude trying to draw the
perfect circle.
B arry McGlashan, 2013
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Barry McGlashan, The Great and Terrible
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Barry McGlashan, Land of Snow and Ice
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Barry McGlashan, New Religion (i)
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Barry McGlashan, New Religion (ii)
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Barry McGlashan, The Beetle And The Whale
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Barry McGlashan, A Place In Time
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Barry McGlashan, The Meteor
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Barry McGlashan, The Relatives
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Barry McGlashan, Years Of Silence