Jeff McMillan: Second Glance
September 12 – November 7, 2026
Jeff McMillian’s project began some two years ago when the artist attached his near-monochromatic paintings, composed on second-hand linen, to an exterior wall of Blind Alley. Exposure to weather, pollution and co-habitation with insects and birds transformed the once unblemished surfaces into chance patinas and welcomed degrees of disintegration. McMillan’s work is guided by his introspective question, “What happens when we just let things be?”
Once his “co-creators” have done their part, the works are removed from their wood stretchers, then cleaned and flattened. Careful to retain the results of the exposure to nature, McMillan meticulously re-lines the fabric to arrest any further changes. The works are then pinned to the interior wall leaving few clues of their previous plight.
Color Field paintings come to mind when viewing his work, sans the telltale evidence of the aforementioned process seen in the borders of his paintings. The raw and exposed margins counter the rectangular planes of colors traditionally reserved for the emotional or transcendent experiences instilled by Color Field works. Occasionally, the areas of color develop losses of pigment that remind the viewer that the work is a “constructed” object.
After handing over the work to its ecological collaborators, McMillan considers how he remains a part of the development process from his home in London. It’s an intangible relationship in which the art and artist mirror each other. The Great Plains of his Lubbock, Texas upbringing still live inside him with its flat fields of patchwork colors and geometric patterns—shaped by agriculture on such a flat landscape. And like his work, its edges are weathered from the long journey between the past and present. McMillan admits, “In some way these expanses in my paintings have an equivalence to where I come from, to my travels, to my autobiography. The idea of a picture being one expanse of colour feels right to me—natural.”
Artist's bio:
Jeff McMillan is an American artist based in London. Born in Lubbock, Texas in 1968, he received a BFA from Texas Tech University (1991) and an MFA at the University of Alabama (1995) before moving to the UK in 1998. His work is held in public and private collections including Tate, London; the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; Museum Voorlinden, Netherlands, and San Antonio Museum of Art, Texas.
He has had recent solo exhibitions at Ivorypress, Madrid (2025), and Kristof De Clercq Gallery, Ghent (2024, 2021 and 2018). In 2023 McMillan was Artist in Residence at Headlands Center for the Arts, California, and in 2020 was Abbey Painting Fellow at the British School at Rome.
Group exhibitions include The Autonomy of Colour in Abstract Art, Fundación Juan March, Madrid (2025); Colour, Tristan Hoare Gallery, London (2025); ...With Things as Things, Luxembourg + Co., London (2024); Art is the Antidote, Museum Voorlinden, Netherlands (2022); Fuori le Mura, various locations, Rome (2020); Books + Papers II, Christine König Galerie, Vienna (2019); Fading Away, 22,48 m2, Paris (2018); 250th Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London (2018); ABJAD, Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh (2015); and the John Moores Painting Prize, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (2002, 2004, 2006).
As a curator McMillan created and ran the project space PEARL from 2001-2004 and has since organized a number of exhibitions, including the abstract drawing show Tell it Slant at Frith Street Gallery, London (2016) and I AR YOU: Portraits by Self-Taught American Artists at Large Glass, London (2013). He was co-curator of British Folk Art at Tate Britain in 2014.