Artist Barry McGlashan works on nearly 60 small paintings at once out of his studio in Edinburgh, Scotland. “It helps to keep my thinking alive. I find the pieces start to talk to one another,” says the Aberdeen-born painter, who was recently elected to the Royal Scottish Academy, a distinction shared with only 500 of his countrymen over the institution’s 200 years.
Artist Barry McGlashan at his studio in Edinburgh, Scotland; Evergreen (2023, oil on canvas) and The Night Meeting (2025, oil on canvas) are in the background
WENDY MCGLASHANMcGlashan has been intrigued by the idea of painting as a form of storytelling and narrative since childhood, when he would spend hours drawing pictures from an encyclopedia, watching old films, and reading books and comics. “I would imagine my own versions of those worlds,” he recalls. He has been painting from a combination of life and imagination ever since. The imagery in his work might come from recall, or maybe an old photograph. He especially likes the surprise and unfamiliarity that found images offer: “They feel like a memory, but the interesting thing for me is how unreliable that can be, so it frees me up to let things grow,” he says.
Trapper, 2025, oil on canvas.
COURTESY OF FRESTONIAN GALLERY
Portland, 2021, oil on canvas.
COURTESY OF FRESTONIAN GALLERY
Enlightenment, 2025, oil,
paper, and varnish on panel.
Works from “Invisible Lines, Immortal Beams,” his recent show at London’s Frestonian Gallery, trace the evolution of his inspirations. Trapper, born of the artist’s fascination with the lives of pioneers, began as a landscape; he later added a figure influenced by the work of Edvard Munch.
The Million Year Picnic, inspired by a trip that McGlashan took to Yosemite’s Mirror Lake and titled after a Ray Bradbury story, emphasizes how we become the place we are in. And Last Light emerged from an old photograph of a garden that the artist imagined to be in France, its otherworldly, half-lit light conjuring Shakespeare’s promise of dreams: “When most I blink, then do my eyes best see.”
Last Light, 2025, oil, paper, and varnish on panel.
COURTESY OF FRESTONIAN GALLERYTHIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN VOLUME 20 OF FREDERIC MAGAZINE. CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE!
