Brent Millar: After the Rain

To mark his 70th year the Open Eye Gallery presents a large-scale exhibition to celebrate the works of Edinburgh-based artist Brent Millar.

Brent looks to nature, poetry and music to produce work of rare symbolic and emotive force, creating dreamlike compositions where observation and imagination blur harmoniously. Birds are a unifying theme in his practice, emerging as the symbolic link between music and nature. Starlings, goldfinches, chaffinches and swans repeatedly sweep into his paintings, defined in areas of saturated colour and delineated by bold strokes.

Featuring paintings, drawings and ceramics this exhibition of new and historical works encapsulates both the joyful and expressive work for which he has become known.

Imagine having synaesthesia and experiencing Brent's paintings. What sounds, smells and tastes would you perceive; the buzzing of bees, the sound of laughter, the perfume of blossom, the splash of water in the fish pond, the smell of fresh coffee?

All the joyful things that life has to offer; truthful experiences re-presented. An antidote to the toxins of solipsism, cynicism and irony. A Mandala for the 21st century. The painter's touch communicates unconsciously like body language revealing more truth than words.

Brent's manipulation of paint has the capacity to "transcribe the adventures of the optic nerve" (Bonnard) .Van Gogh wanted to provide consolation through art "art is to console those who are broken by life". Balthus's view was that painting had been ruined by pretension. Brent's paintings are never pretentious and always consoling. There is a serious playfulness at work which requires significant skill to convey sensations and feeling. Francis Bacon described painting "unlocking the valves of feeling". These paintings profess a return to the senses, an affirmation of goodness.

Henry Kondracki RSA

Picasso famously remarked that, when he was a young boy, he could draw like Raphael but it had taken him a lifetime to learn to draw as children do.

Children have an innate creative ability and are often capable of producing remarkable art, showing keen observation and great imagination. There is just such a drawing made by a young Brent Millar, aged four, and it is a carefully drawn depiction of a bus and its passengers. But that is not all. Brent adds a depiction of a crucified Christ and succeeds in creating a truly surprising and memorable surreal image.

Most children lose this natural facility as they grow up but happily some manage to retain it. Brent is one of these lucky few and his drawings continue to exhibit great skill and inventiveness. At times they reveal a true understanding of the nature of beauty and are often underpinned by a touch of gentle humour.

As a student at Edinburgh College of Art in the late 1960's, Brent was able to develop his skills as a draughtsman in life drawing classes and in the studio. Existing drawings from his student days show a sensitive use of line, tone and colour as well as great liveliness & energy. Sir Robin Phillipson, then Head of the School of Drawing & Painting at ECA, was obviously impressed as he purchased one of Brent's drawings for his own collection - a fine drawing of a dead hare.

Brent has continued to make drawings throughout his career. Many were lively portrait drawings of friends or, when he was teaching, of his pupils. In these, he shows that he is frequently capable of capturing a likeness of his sitter with remarkable economy in the use of line & tone.

Brent is certainly never precious in any way about his drawing. It continues to be a very natural activity for him and, often with childlike delight, he might produce spontaneous drawings of birds or flowers on scraps of paper or on the back of an envelope - putting a line around an idea, which is exactly how Henri Matisse described the simple act of making a drawing.

Alfons Bytautas RSA