Essay originally published in the gallery exhibition catalog, Melville Mclean: Northeast by Southwest, 2002. Melville McLean by Aprile Gallant LIKE MANY ARTISTS who choose landscape as their primary subject, Melville McLean feels a deep affinity with the natural world. This connection, however, is not just on the levels of the visual, spiritual, emotional, or philosophical, but almost on a molecular plane—as if he is impelled to pack every moment of awe and wonder, every grain of historical or scientific knowledge, and every compositional or chromatic solution gleaned from his over 20 years of artistic training into every image he creates. In clumsy hands, such an effort would show—in the choice of mawkish subjects, the inclusion of overly-detailed scientific or historical texts, or stilted and obvious framing—but McLean makes it all look seamless and effortless, as if we have simply had the great fortune of stumbling upon sites that manage to balance an unexpected intimacy with an overwhelming grandeur. In every aspect of his work, McLean seeks to give his audience a view of the inter-connectedness of nature. Originally trained in drawing and painting, he found in photography a way to treat the microscopic organization of his subjects in tandem with the larger elements of traditional composition. These two forces work together to create convincing spaces, where viewers can fully experience the landscape. In Clouds on Ice, Lake Auburn (2001) from "Maine Portfolio I", for example, the scene, though glorious, seems perfectly natural. Yet, upon further contemplation, a subtle organization emerges—the rock in the lower right corner anchors the composition, leading in a sweeping diagonal that intersects with the round patch of ice in the mid-ground and then leads to the shaft of light on the water which veers swiftly to the right in a sharp triangular shape that is mimicked by the ice floe beneath it and the spit of forested land above it. Beneath this swift right to left movement creeps a miasma of rocks and reflected clouds, which fills the foreground with a rich, mottled surface. The rock also leads up the right side, stopping at the bright cloud in the water and ending with the patch of light in the upper right corner. It is so easy to get lost in the compositional complexities of McLean’s images, but it is equally easy to ignore them and simply be silently captivated by the tiny, unexpected surprises they reveal. Each of these visible details allows the viewer an entry point into the scene, and their interrelationship keeps us deeply involved in the world that McLean has created. The precision of McLean’s photographs merges his love of the breathtaking vistas of nineteenth-century French landscape painting with a deep understanding of the workings of twentieth-century abstraction, as evident in Sea Cliff Fence (1998). The roped white fence, bordering a swift drop to where the red sands melt into the waterline, are visually compacted into a beautiful gradation of pure color where the sea meets the land. The strong horizon line, echoed by the sharp shadow of the foreground pole, grounds the eye to the land, which is richly carpeted by green grass dotted with yellow flowers. It is as if we can appreciate the danger of a precipice without the shock of a possible fall—a beauty that thrills, delights, and calms. The exhibition title "Northeast by Southwest" refers to the two major subjects of McLean’s oeuvre, his explorations of the coastal regions of his native Canada and the interior sections of his adopted home of Maine and his most recent work in the painted deserts of Nevada. While his choice of these topographically disparate areas would be expected to produce pictorially diverse images, as different as Paul Caponigro’s grandly open Southwest skies versus his quietly dense New England forests, McLean’s work displays a surprising commonality of focus. While he perfectly captures what is unique and special in the place, his theme of inter-connectedness unites these works into a cohesive whole. Compare, for example, Beehives in Blueberry Field (1997), a cluster of yellow and blue-white painted beehives scattered in a verdant field with low trees, with Desert Life (2001), a richly red expanse of earth dotted with scrub and surrounded by dramatic rock formations and a mountain vista. In both works, McLean has taken a surprising perspective—a worm’s eye view of what appears to be pedestrian spaces shaped on the perimeter by natural elements (trees or rocks). He has also chosen to dignify unconventional subjects—a field of scrub rather than the dramatic mountain behind or the human-made structures dotting a patchy field. In both, the effect is oddly heroic, as if the scrub and their shadows not only mimic, but give rise to the majestic mountain, just as the city of beehives appear to grow from the earth, connecting the blue expanse of sky with the grey bedrock upon which they stand. McLean’s goal is to create photographs where every place in the image is part of an aesthetically arranged whole and yet is also a completely realistic landscape in a particular place and time. This is no where more evident than in Sky, Rocks and Plants (2001), where the chromatic wonders of the desert landscape are rendered as visible, interlocking parts of the wonder of the natural order. McLean’s use of digital media would also seem a surprising choice for an artist so inspired by nature. Rather than choosing to employ digital means to create a new reality, McLean uses it to clarify what he sees. After he photographs the landscape on 4 x 5 inch film, he scans the color positive into a computer, converts it to a digital file, enlarges the image, corrects the color to match the film positive, and prints it through a laser process on conventional color photographic paper. The digital processes allow him to increase the image size with the minimum loss of clarity and detail, as well as to correct the inevitable color shifts that arise from translating color film to color print. He uses digital technology not as a primary tool in his art, but as a means to maintain the integrity of the image he has captured on film. The resulting clarity of the prints allows the viewer to closely observe both the minute and the majestic suspended in a single moment. back