8 – 29 April 201
Take Me to the River is a body of work that proceeds from the 2015 series Springs and Falls. The compositional devices continue to emanate from Breughel and Bosch though these recent paintings are more deliberate in initial design.
On one hand the works are a nod to pastoral landscape, figured with foibled yet grand characters whose world is now seriously at risk. On the other, they are surrealist, back-of-the-brainscape works that include figurative biological and mechanistic references in a world more obviously disturbed. From the purity at The Source to the mutations and acidic bilge of Out-Fall, McWhannell’s “river of life” has issues.
“It needs be said; there’s a lot that is comic here and plenty of graffiti. I wish not to disturb or depress utterly. [As Brett Whiteley says,] painting is a ‘difficult pleasure’. I love it. I have fun in the moment, and the thoughts and musings along the way are manifold and far from endlessly bleak. Every day is a day in paradise but you have to be concerned as you walk the banks, from source to sea.”
