The Red Head Gallery is pleased to present Ian Mackay’s exhibition Learning to Stay with the Trouble. The exhibition presents a series of paintings and drawings of subjects and scenarios that resonate with larger issues in our current political and cultural landscape.  Drawing on the legacies of both figurative and abstract painting, Mackay creates speculative situations containing energetic motifs that seem to be actively managing, even fighting, the limitations of their depicted environments -the limits of the canvas itself. Paintings such as Broken Hotel Window (2017) and Painter’s Bag of Tricks Open for Customs Inspection (2017) are imaginary responses to recent troubling events.  In depicting the unthinkable, or the impossible, Mackay’s paintings convey anxiety and urgency while doubling as allegories about the limits, mobility and efficacy of the painted image.