By Heather Mallick

And here we are at home in the third year of the fading pandemic. Has there has ever been a time that so called out for genre painting, scenes of everyday life, domestic, seemingly ordinary and yet so very interesting?

The great Canadian painter Julia McNeely has always found the extraordinary in the ordinary. She paints landscapes, florals, animals both domesticated and wild, all with a core of great animation. The fox looks directly at the viewer. Do not meet the animal’s gaze. Foxes do not like that.  

And now she studies humans.

I have been buying her work for years but her latest field of study moves me the most: the motley crew that is the family. Here are parents and children and grandchildren, sisters and cats, dogs, lots of them.

They spend a lot of time in the kitchen with its checkered floor and white stove rendered in thick logs of white paint, in the comfortable crowded living room, around a big table.

A red-haired toddler is cuddled and fed.

A young woman sits at the table giving herself a facial, waiting for a clay mask to dry. She holds up a middle finger dipped in clay.

A teenage boy stares into the open fridge with surmise.

Grandpa drinks from a cup as the cat laps from a dish at the table. He reads the paper. He slumps in his armchair, legs spread. He stands at the bathroom mirror, his hair white, confused and electric, brushing his teeth.

Grandpa stares at puzzle pieces scattered on the table, his head in his hand, mystified. He’s in his bathrobe, a red one, a blue one. He has an array of soft shapeless garments.  

His daughter’s paintbrushes stick up from containers on the table like dried spikes or bulrushes. The room is dotted with flowers and foliage.

The grandparents walk, every move expressing caution on steps, on winter sidewalks, at the door. Their footwear looks like moon boots, better for stability.

The cat stares at the painter. The dogs make themselves comfortable. They get along.

The family is masked, in pink masks and black masks and blue masks, clubby in the tedium of masking.

Other painters have tried to convey life indoors, each in their own way. Raoul Dufy, finally regaining respect in France, painted with his window shutters wide open overlooking Nice. New York illustrator Maira Kalman paints people stumping awkwardly down their street on an errand or standing still at home, lost in thought.

Johannes Vermeer’s 17th century women are alone at home, almost ceremonial as they pour the milk or read a mysterious note. 19th century French artist Berthe Morisot painted privacy and clouds of maternal love.

McNeely’s people are seated, bent, scrunched up, halt, relaxed, leggy, suddenly bold. I cannot read their emotions but at home they always seem comfortable, as if they’d been sitting in that kitchen chair for decades. Who knows if they get along? What plans are they making?

Her clumpy impasto style exudes confidence. Here we are at our house. What’s for dinner? What is that dog thinking? Does Grandpa understand? Why does the red-headed child look suddenly uncertain? Who’s hungry?

McNeely paints the way we live now.