66 Artists Magazine January/February 2020
Creative Limbo
The Source of Light, McIntosh’s first series, came about
after having already worked on landscapes for nearly 10
years, first working in pen and ink, then watercolor and
eventually oil. He decided to convert a lifetime of strange
doodles into this initial project. In time, however, he felt
the paintings were beginning to depart from the original
idea and that he was working on something that was no
longer true to his vision—so he stopped.
This decision left McIntosh in limbo at a rather fraught
time in his life. His first son was on the way, and he was
worried that he wouldn’t be able to provide his family with
any degree of financial security. He didn’t know in what
creative direction to head.
In the months preceding his son’s birth, he and his part-
ner, Shona, had been given lots of toys, including a bag of
Sylvanian Families (anthropomorphic figurines from the
Japanese company Epoch) from his artist friend Mat Kemp.
“I decided I should paint them,” he says, “in Caravaggio-style
arrangements, in horror settings.” McIntosh set to workstaging them in the Bates motel, the
infamous hotel from the film, Psycho.
He couldn’t get the project started,
however, because it felt wrong: “It
felt like cheap tricks again, trying to
create something too attractive and
without any real substance,” he says.
“I worked on it in the background
without finding anything useful. I was
so desperate to paint the Sylvanian
Families that I couldn’t see beyond
the subject. Then, I woke up in the
middle of the night, clear about
what I had to do: It was as simple
as removing the subject. The horror
setting without the silliness—a doll-
house interior, but vacated. It had an
eerie attraction.”
The question then was where—and
what—to paint? In the early days,ABOVE
Tod und Feuer
oil on linen,
39²⁄₅x47¼OPPOSITE
The Navigator
oil on linen, 16½ x22