Barry McGlashan: Between The Dream and Waking

In locating his exhibition between dream and consciousness, Barry McGlashan has added layers and filters to his imagined world. In previous bodies of work a super-reality has located his obsessions in the sharp-focus end of the range of subconscious experience. Here the mists of romantic symbolism we know from Bocklin and Whistler are deployed: elusive imagery, like half-remembered fragments of a dream. In several small, enigmatic pictures his palette seems to derive from a chemical process, the image persisting through an acidic wash or half bleached by the sun. Once more McGlashan has demonstrated his imagination and originality, impossible to pigeon-hole, and reminded us of the painterly qualities he exploits to realise his visions.