Greg McHarg at the Red Head Gallery, 2000

Not the least attractive quality of the paintings making up Toronto artist Greg McHarg's new exhibition ‘Picnic’, is the way they so jauntily weave images of outdoor relaxation with concepts drawn from the high seriousness of advanced abstraction. His four beach ball paintings for example look as if a ball had its surface carefully removed and stretched out flat. The result is a scrolling of bright, cleanly abutted segments spread out like a map projection - a spherical surface made two-dimensional. More art-historically dignified are the six paintings making up the handsome Gingham series. The controlling image here is the checkered tablecloth. painting a checkered tablecloth would make a good abstract painting, no? maybe a bit relentless, however? So, what McHarg has done, in order to add more dynamism to his checkerboard planes, is to propose a tablecloth with a fold, a turning down of a corner, a wrinkle in the field. The result is a still-satisfying gridding in paint, but with disruptive moments of dislocation and slippage. Regularity and expectation deftly compromised- and thereby explored.

- written for the Globe and Mail, December 15th, 2000