“Tess McMillan: Find Me Where You Left Me” is on view at Laurence Esnol Gallery from October 5 to November 10.
red hair against her skin is downright painterly. Yet McMillan’s canvases, on view this month in her first-ever solo exhibition,at Laurence Esnol’s gallery in Paris, strays from any obvious art historical references. Her figures—variously crouched in strange rooms, sprawled in burning fields, and stranded in the snow or surf—appear alone, their expressions colored by a vague distress.
That rigor lit a spark, and when her family eventually moved from east Texas to upstate New York, McMillan enrolled in the fine arts program at her public high school. But there, she was somewhat less inspired by the instruction, finding her art teachers’ standards frustratingly limiting: a painting wasn’t finished until it had a background, for example, and she was discouraged from mixing a little water into her acrylics the way she liked to do.
Asked what kind of art she was looking at and responding to at the time—which artists were informing her fledgling creative vision—McMillan pauses. “I wouldn’t say that I was particularly tapped into art history or culture at large in high school, but I do remember I loved Lucian Freud,” she replies at last. “I’m trying to think if there’s anybody else. As much as I want to say that—I don’t know—I loved Andrew Wyeth, I didn’t know who the fuck anybody was.
Now, she regularly whiles away entire afternoons at her intimate, north-facing studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, mixing colors and dreaming up narratives. The thematic through line for the 10 paintings that make up “Find Me Where You Left Me” is loneliness, and a longing for connection—ideas related to the psychological toll of the pandemic, sure, but also broader social and ideological shifts. “I remember realizing, Oh, I can’t think of a single person that I know that’s just doing 100% well.
Growing up, McMillan never imagined painting for a living—it would be a stretch to call this new show a dream long deferred, delighted as she is that it’s happening—but she also had “absolutely no idea” what she wanted to do after high school. “Even to this day, it’s still kind of crazy that I did anything,” McMillan remarks, wryly.
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