Brett McMahon - Nanda/Hobbs

I think I wnt to see this a couple of weeks ago. I read Sebastian Smee's ideas in the printed brochure the gallery. In fact I read the essay today.

Reading the essay it's hard to separate your mind from the grip of cliche. I've been a fan of Smee's for decades but if the Nanda/Hobbs publication were anything to go by I can't say I would stay the same. 

McMahon's twisted forms form a kind of abstract but the contradictory forces Smee sees working underneath them, in the substratum of creation, let's say, probably have less to do with the way the paintings look, with their uncomfortable yet familiar eucalypt organic shapes, than ideas of the beautiful.

McMahon is younger than me but I can see how he arrived at these sort of gammy elegancies. But always the sky. At least the sky. That's what the branches are reaching for after all. Just that.