The amazing artwork of Robert Skot McMillan is featured in the art show at the Critical Mass Gallery in 100 Mile House through the month of March.
While McMillan has undergone formal studies earning him a fine art degree at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and an art diploma from Capilano University, he has been creating various art forms since being first inspired at the age of three, he explains.
“It just came about naturally from sculpture in relation to building these pieces – there’s a certain ‘sculpturalness’ about them – they are put together almost like a jigsaw puzzle, which ultimately refers to the body. I view each painting as a body in, and of itself.”
The soft-spoken and gentle-mannered artist clearly, if shyly, recalls his personal epiphany to express himself through art as a youngster lying in the back of his father’s station wagon on a family outing.
McMillan says he was encouraged by his parents – neither of whom are artists – while he was growing up in Powell River, and his art has metamorphosed from one form to another over decades.
Like his shows, the coastal-raised artist explains he never sets out to intentionally form any theme before setting up a show or even designing an art piece.
This talented artist adds his paintings often take, and exhibit, the “life blows we all undergo” whether in transporting them around, in the gouges or slashes he sometimes makes intentionally, or even by graffiti artists he has, on occasion, invited to add what they wish for “collaborating” in art.
Sculpture is incorporated in one of his paintings in the show which he has signed in braille, and unlike most painters, he encourages people to touch them.
This month’s show featured at Gus Horn’s pop-up gallery displays McMillan’s acrylic-on-canvas and acrylic-on-board pieces, with several separate sections the artist attached together, creating another unique configuration to his art.
Letting his inspiration come naturally means drawing from signals, meditations, songs, harmony, colour, light, atmosphere, love, evolution, revolutions, language, beauty, elation as well as “microcosm and macrocosm,” birth and death, and much more, he explains.
While the inter-discipline of RS McMillan is much too lengthy to include here, folks may experience it through his art display at the gallery this month, which he describes as a “culmination in his concepts between 1988-2010.”
“I’ve been feeling my way through my work, and feeling my way through life, and it’s been really interesting to me.
“People have looked at a painting, and they’ve started just ‘reading it’ like there’s a bunch of text sitting there – and I’m listening, thinking yes, that’s true, that’s right.”
Also strongly led by creation, birth, biology, astronomy and destruction, many of these aspects are sensitively and artistically blended throughout McMillan’s metaphorical works in the show, expressing emotional and artistic images of everything from women giving birth to astronauts in space (note, some parents may wish to view some images prior to family viewing).
Born in Scotland, McMillan emigrated with his parents and by age five had settled in Powell River, where he remained most of his life until recently moving to Duncan, he explains.
Also as a self-described deep and creative thinker since a very early age, he has long believed he was “born to be an artist” and has never created any work to stroke his ego or to make money (although at age 49, he admits selling his pieces becomes more of a survival point).
The Critical Mass Gallery is located at Unit #2, 150 Birch Ave. and is typically open Fridays and Saturdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. You can also visit by chance or by appointment.
Folks interested in private showings can text their request to Gus at 250-644-0228 or e-mail criticalmass1922@gmail.com.
