Now, she regularly whiles away entire afternoons at her intimate, north-facing studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, mixing colors and dreaming up narratives. (She’s always been drawn to the portrait form: “I’m really not interested in painting anything that doesn’t have a person in it,” McMillan avers.) The thematic through line for the 10 paintings that make up “Find Me Where You Left Me” is loneliness and a longing for connection—ideas related to the psychological toll of the pandemic, sure, but also broader social and ideological shifts. “I remember realizing, Oh, I can’t think of a single person I know that’s just doing 100% well. There’s nobody I know that is a beacon of mental health and is doing phenomenally. And I think a lot of that stems from loneliness, in some way,” McMillan says. “Human beings across cultures used to think of themselves as an amalgamation of every single person who had come before them, and as a culture, we’ve evolved away from that into thinking of ourselves as ourselves. We don’t think of ourselves as our ancestors, and we certainly do not think of ourselves as anybody who’s going to come after us, because nobody feels secure in their future. And so I think that that’s one of many reasons that people feel so isolated.”Instagram content
The show’s title channels the voice of her inner child, one reaching out for love, belonging, understanding. “This feeling of wanting somebody to come back to you, of feeling left [behind], it’s really heavy and powerful to me,” McMillan reflects. “And I feel like it’s something that guides everybody.” Growing up, McMillan never imagined painting for a living—it would be a stretch to call this new show a dream long deferred, delighted as she is that it’s happening—but she also had “absolutely no idea” what she wanted to do after high school. “Even to this day, it’s still kind of crazy that I did anything,” McMillan remarks wryly. And yet, here she is, flitting around the world for fashion month, appearing in films—she has a role in Sean Price Williams’s forthcoming fantasy-drama The Sweet East, which premiered at Cannes this year—and exhibiting her extraordinary paintings.
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