by Bailey White
Staff Writer
You’ve seen Jim McMillan’s work. As the forensic artist for the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, McMillan’s composite sketches are the ones that appear on television or in the newspaper, representing a crime suspect.
But that’s only a small part of what McMillan, the son of former sheriff Jim McMillan, can do with a blank canvas. His paintings, a few of which are currently on exhibit at Reddi-Arts 1037 Gallery on Hendricks Avenue, display his talent for capturing landscapes and wildlife with a rich, detail-filled accuracy.
“I love detail,” he said. “I think it is interesting and fascinating and it’s a tremendous challenge to try to recreate it on a two-dimensional space.”
It’s a challenge that he can’t resist. McMillan started seriously painting when he was in his 20s, and he hasn’t really stopped, experimenting with landscapes, wildlife and still life.
“I would get bored doing the same thing all the time,” he said. “I prefer to work with a lot of different subjects.”
And types of media.
About three years ago, McMillan spent three weeks at Island International, an artists’ colony near Puget Sound in Washington state, where he learned the technique of etching.
“It was fantastic,” he said. “We’d work from eight in the morning until eleven at night, and we were always ready to get up in the morning and didn’t want to stop working.”
Since then, McMillan has wanted to do more etchings but prefers the idea of a smaller series of prints.
“I’d rather do it in additions of 25, not 200, because hand-coloring the same thing over and over doesn’t feel like creating,” he said.
“I’d also like to do more sculpture,” said McMillan. “I’d like to work with bronze but I need to get up the courage to try it.”
McMillan recently made a mold of a clay sculpture of one of his twin sons that he produced years ago. He decided to cast it in porcelain, and although it exploded in the kiln, it was a step in the right direction.
“It was just sitting there and it was either try it and maybe ruin it or let it keep sitting there,” he said, adding he’ll probably recast in bronze.
McMillan also sculpts as a way of helping him represent an object on canvas.
“When I’m working with wildlife I might sculpt the subject so that I can see how light falls on it or work with its pose,” he said.
“I don’t have the luxury to set up on the side of a mountain in North Carolina,” said McMillan, who often works from photographs he takes.
“I try to capture in photographs what I have in mind. Most artists have something in their head that’s real,” he said. “Norman Rockwell went to tremendous lengths to set up his subjects.”
It’s certainly different than creating a composite sketch, when he creates a drawing based solely on a description of a suspect.
“I try to put down only what I’m hearing,” said McMillan, who’s been the JSO’s forensic artist for the past 14 years after working 11 years in different departments. “I try not to assume or guess anything.”
A witness might go through a book of different features, picking out ones that most resemble a suspect, which McMillan will then compose in a sketch.
It’s a detailed process and one that isn’t always easy.
“It’s hard, because you’re always a part of someone else’s tragedy,” said McMillan.
Another part of his job with the JSO involves recreating crime scenes, either with a two-dimensional diagram or a to-scale model, that attorneys can use in court.
“There is some creativity in it,” he said, “like how to make something resemble brick, but I think of it as more of a craft than an art.”