Neil McClelland

Finding things to paint, in thrift shops or around the house, is an endless treasure hunt for me. My focus is objects that evoke childhood memories that mix nostalgia with buried fears. Small, deceptively childlike things forecast adult themes of hope and loss. In my paintings I combine these objects playfully or emotionally to create tableaux charged with personal meaning. I am engaged as much by the process of arranging these objects on an altar of glass and black construction paper, the light from a bare bulb raking across the scene, as by the act of painting.

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