Within John McAllister's canvases we find bushes, trees, leaves and grasses in motifs reflective of the California vegetation which form the origin of his work. His color palette features a certain peculiarity: heaven and earth are kept in dark violet and blue, the flower stems, petals, and tree trunks in bright orange, and settled upon the ground are light greens and yellows. As unusual as the choice of color seems, there is something nonetheless familiar about it. The stark color contrasts vividly evoke the qualities of analog photographic negatives. Where the reversal of the recorded light-dark conditions will be reset in the darkroom through exposure of the photographic paper again, McAllister’s ferns, leaves, and flowers appear to be a sort of inverse – somehow painted plein air in the California landscape from the darkroom. It is as though he has made an object derived at an intermediate moment – after exposure and before development – only to then be given a icturesque form.
