Turley Gallery presents Portraits, a solo exhibition of new work from Will McLeod in The Drawing Room.

When I first think about portraits, I think about my family’s photos and pictures that are framed by a shaped mat, and stagnate lovingly in the living room or den, or on top a bookshelf or desk. I think about stiff ruff collared elders of history, the color plates in the middle of my art history book from high school.

This musing staged my inspiration for my new series of Portraits. When I created these pieces, I wanted to do justice and react to those ill-informed memories and speculations. I gave myself some visual rules to keep my scrawling aesthetic in check.

Each work would have a graphic “mat” or perimeter that is part of the composition. 

This “mat” would have multiple purposes. By including this graphic outline in the body of the work, rather than a framing byproduct, the inner details will be further highlighted. I also like to reinforce the point, in my work, that the art you’re looking at is just the offshoot of an artist’s materials and actions. By including an allusion to the framing materials as part of the whole composition, the entire work takes a step off its dreamy throne into the objective.

Each work would be theoretically about a person or include some sort of bodied figure.

My work is always about my feelings and reactions to what’s going on in my own personal melodrama or vice versa, it’s tranquility. All the works in the Portrait series are about falling in love, thinking about loving someone, and keeping the intangible sour darkness of fault or regret, at bay.

I like to give myself constraints sometimes when I’m delving into new projects. I find some inhibition can balance the jarring movement, and obtuse subject matter, thereby giving deeper meaning to the whole picture.

These works are saturated, aloof, and embracing. Be it the painting on paper, or the epic fabric iteration of that smaller study, each work is a psychedelic wreck, an illustrative snapshot of a moody reaction to myself or another.

—Will McLeod