William Mackinnon, The Party Is Over I Thought There Was Something More To Say © William Mackinnon. Courtesy of Bowman Hal Life unfolds as a game of chance—unexpected turns, fleeting victories, and sudden setbacks shape our path in ways we rarely anticipate. We move forward, stumble, rise again, navigating a terrain that is at once familiar and unpredictable. It's this delicate interplay between control and surrender, certainty and uncertainty, that William Mackinnon captures in Snakes and Ladders, his latest exhibition at Bowman Hall Gallery, part of Coleccion SOLO's newly opened space SOLO CSV.
Named after the classic board game that symbolizes life's fluctuations, the exhibition presents a visual narrative charged with both anticipation and unease. Mackinnon's paintings exist in a liminal space between landscape and psychology, where roads, houses, and horizons blur the boundaries between reality and memory. His layered textures, luminous palettes, and gestural brushwork transform the everyday into something dreamlike and deeply personal. In Snakes and Ladders, he heightens these elements, amplifying the tension between life's structured progression and its chaotic unpredictability.
This body of work emerges from a period of personal and professional upheaval, reflecting themes of transition, uncertainty, and renewal. "This body of work is a breakup album of sorts," Mackinnon notes. "It's about being untethered, about searching for a sense of home."
Based between Australia and Ibiza, Mackinnon creates "psychological landscapes" that merge personal experience with universal themes, turning the mundane into something extraordinary. His work balances memory and discovery, the real and the imagined, capturing the tension between the familiar and the unknown. Recurring motifs—roads, headlights, and reflective street signs—explore oppositions of light and darkness, comfort and threat, intimacy and distance.
Painting for me is a way of being in the world, a way of processing what it is to be human.
With Snakes and Ladders, Mackinnon constructs landscapes that function less as specific places and more as psychological spaces, where experience and emotion intersect. These settings, existing between reality and dream, evoke displacement, longing, and the search for meaning. Roads liquefy, darkness unveils hidden layers, and everyday objects take on quiet symbolic weight. His paintings immerse viewers in spaces that feel both familiar and subtly unsettling.
Light—or its absence—plays a central role, signaling transformation, possibility, or isolation. Mackinnon's use of darkness goes beyond negative space; his shadows foster ambiguity, allowing forms to emerge gradually, much like memories or emotions that reveal themselves over time. Roads, a constant presence in his work, serve as more than physical paths—they map experiences, transitions, and uncertainties. "The road is like an avatar, a stand-in for me—it's a record of experience and a thinking process," he says.
Ordinary objects—road signs, garbage bins, pool hoses—become focal points. Stripped of their usual context, they carry personal and existential weight, questioning ideas of home and belonging. This transformation of the everyday into something profound speaks to how we construct meaning from our surroundings, often unconsciously.
The exhibition’s title reinforces its central theme: progress is rarely linear. Setbacks accompany every ascent, yet Mackinnon’s work resists fatalism. Beneath its reflections on instability lies a quiet optimism. The Silent Scream, the only painting in the show featuring a human figure, encapsulates this philosophy. A lone surfer, broken board in hand, walks along a beach—the aftermath of an accident rendered in hesitant steps. The tension lies not in the fall but in the quiet resilience of moving forward.
The largest and final painting in the series, Snakes and Ladders, serves as a culmination of Mackinnon's recent artistic journey. Expansive and emotionally charged, the work brims with repeated motifs—roads, ladders, pools, bins—each symbolizing movement, connection, or closure. It embodies his belief in transformation—how pain can be a threshold for change. Painting at this scale, he says, is akin to competing at the highest level in sport, demanding both technical mastery and emotional depth. The work resists a singular interpretation, shifting in meaning depending on the viewer's state of mind—just like life itself.
Even his technique embodies the idea of chance, layering control with unpredictability. "I want to be in a space of not really knowing what I'm doing—that’s when it's alive," he explains. Combining acrylic, oil, automotive finishes, and even glitter, Mackinnon builds textured landscapes that invite tactile engagement. He sands back layers to reveal traces of past decisions, allowing accidents and discoveries to shape the final composition. This process echoes his broader philosophy: rather than imposing rigid structure, he lets the painting evolve organically. The result is a visual language that mirrors life's unpredictability, inviting viewers to navigate his dreamlike worlds through their own shifting perceptions.
"It's about addition and destruction—adding more, then taking away, like in life," Mackinnon explains.
With Snakes and Ladders, Mackinnon offers more than landscapes—he presents a meditation on fate, resilience, and the emotional weight embedded in the spaces we inhabit. His paintings don't just ask to be viewed; they ask to be felt. Each work resonates with the potential for both joy and loss, success and failure, revealing the profound emotional weight embedded in the ordinary.
The exhibition is on view at Bowman Hall Gallery in Madrid, housed within the newly opened SOLO CSV. Spanning 4,500m², SOLO CSV will host various artistic and contemporary initiatives promoted by Colección SOLO. Designed by renowned architect Juan Herreros, Bowman Hall is the first project to open within this space, which will open progressively, as the projects that comprise it are activated. With a curatorial focus on aesthetic connections across time and geography, the gallery aligns closely with SOLO's broader artistic vision, creating a space where past and present, tradition and experimentation, seamlessly converge.
