Charlie James Gallery is pleased to present James McClung: At That Moment, the Inland Empire-based artist’s first exhibition with the gallery. McClung’s diaristic paintings capture moments in time with a keen eye toward framing and detail, inviting the viewer to consider the small occasions, chance encounters, and fleeting serendipities that fill the days, if one’s eyes are open to them. Many of the works on view capture moments of transition. In pausing to enshrine beginnings and endings, McClung records the evolving landscape — both physical and emotional — upon which a life is built.

Throughout the exhibition, McClung builds compositions that embody a subtle and layered kind of family storytelling. The largest work, Flowers of Grandmothers Have Changed, is the product of over two years of painting, and depicts the floral bouquet from McClung’s grandmother’s funeral. This grandmother’s Irish ancestry is alluded to by the plaid tablecloth and green newsboy cap, a souvenir from the artist’s own travels in Ireland. The intricate pattern of the tablecloth lends the composition a dramatic sense of perspective, simultaneously flattening the space and leading the eye deeper into it. A similar kind of flattening is achieved with the green privacy fence in Where My Father Was Born Is No Longer There, a poignant meditation on evolving neighborhoods and the unexpected ephemerality of the built environment, especially where it intersects with one’s own personal or family history.

These works also offer windows into very intimate, emotionally charged moments. Blue in Green Was Playing at first reads as a simple still life, with a record player, coffee mug, and stack of art books. The choice of subject offers insights into McClung’s personal pantheon of artists — including Miles Davis, Los Angeles painter Hilary Pecis, and legendary skateboard designer and artist Evan Hecox — and its title suggests that something of note occurred in this moment, but the painting remains somewhat mysterious. Captured just after receiving a heavy piece of news, this work embodies the impulse to mark a shift in the fabric of one’s life — a moment with a definitive “before” and “after.” Something similar lies in the evocation of Matisse’s Red Studio in Flowers of Grandmothers Have Changed. McClung adapts the surreal wash of color as a signifier of a new beginning, one that infuses every corner of the composition.

McClung achieves an immediacy by working from photographs; translating the instantaneous image into intricate graphite-on-paper drawings before translating it again into the slow medium of painting. Beginning with photography lends McClung’s works a photographer’s sense of composition, where tight crops and exaggerated perspectives produce paintings that can verge on abstraction. The bright tomato-red building of El Burrito, a popular Redlands joint, becomes a field of color interrupted only by minimalist piping and the crisp graphic design of the restaurant’s logo, a sharp contrast with the organic reaching of the cactus in the foreground. This playful approach to composition and to art historical precedent elevates McClung’s subjects — often quotidian views of the Inland Empire — reaffirming the realities of his hometown as valid subjects for the artist' s gaze.

The exhibition’s small back gallery contains framed preparatory drawings and other graphite on paper works. These highly detailed drawings feature the same kinds of framing and perspective techniques as the paintings, with an added graphic sensibility and textural sensitivity that is rooted in the stippling, striping, and shading in which the medium excels. For example, the tight framing of the drawing Track renders strange the familiar curving lanes, pulling them away from the realm of the real and towards pure abstraction. Throughout this body of work, McClung shares small moments that hold great resonance. In capturing scenes that are seemingly mundane, McClung invites the audience to focus on moments that are often passed over, to sit in periods of transition and to relish the beauty of endings that turn into new beginnings.