A Complete Unknown: The Life and Art of Brad McMillan
St. Louis, MO - The mind and hand of the late Memphis, Tennessee based artist, Brad McMillan, lent itself to 35 years of constant drawing, doodling, painting, illustrating. In “A Complete Unknown,” which opened on Saturday July 14th, Flood Plain collaborated with McMillan’s daughter, Catherine, to show the breadth of this artist’s thirty-plus years of self-taught creative practice and reflect on a daughter’s memories and unanswered questions regarding her deceased father’s life and work.
Since McMillan’s passing in 2007, Catherine (Cat) has been rummaging through the vast collection of drawings, paintings, photos, and correspondence her father left behind. Cat’s memory and image of her father as she knew him is full, beautiful, and solid, and could simply be left alone at that. But the discoveries Cat has made about her father in excavating this creative inheritance has created a cloud of question and about McMillan's life separate from being a father and a husband. McMillan wrote and drew constantly, saved letters written and received, and even printed out emails as he transitioned to the digital age. In a way, Cat can only contemplate about her father's past relationships, experiences, and his interpretation of the complicated times in which he came of age as an artist.
"A Complete Unknown" opened with a public reception on July 14, 2018 from 6-9PM and ran through August 11, 2018.
Since McMillan’s passing in 2007, Catherine (Cat) has been rummaging through the vast collection of drawings, paintings, photos, and correspondence her father left behind. Cat’s memory and image of her father as she knew him is full, beautiful, and solid, and could simply be left alone at that. But the discoveries Cat has made about her father in excavating this creative inheritance has created a cloud of question and about McMillan's life separate from being a father and a husband. McMillan wrote and drew constantly, saved letters written and received, and even printed out emails as he transitioned to the digital age. In a way, Cat can only contemplate about her father's past relationships, experiences, and his interpretation of the complicated times in which he came of age as an artist.
"A Complete Unknown" opened with a public reception on July 14, 2018 from 6-9PM and ran through August 11, 2018.