I was first attracted to early works of Joe Mcgill by his ability to evoke from the simplest of things like a paper clip or a fragment of cotton the poetic quality of human experience.  We are all surrounded by objects which we throw away and hardly glance at because once we have used them we regard them as nothing.  Joe Mcgill has taken them up and studied and perhaps admired their purpose and design, and then devised a setting for them in a space, usually white.  Thus he made me see a quality of artistic elegance in the tiny things he had chosen and related to each other and I felt a new awareness of the shapes and structures of what I had previously ignored.
He has, now, moved on to more complicated considerations, most often with Biblical allusions or religious suggestivity.  It has thus become easier for the viewer to follow the source of his creative impulse.  For instance in his "Seven Years of Famine" he employs the fragile skeletons of a dead leaf as symbol; In "Seven Years of Feasting" wheat ears, the source of bread are inserted.  He also enjoys a 'pun’ and the seven squares of "All Good Children" invoke the rhyme "Go to Heaven". One assumes that such an inveterate collector as he is, contemplates these tiny fragments of nature and then arrives at the moment when he can devise a way of involving them in a creative image, part painting, part sculpture and laid out within a delicate white ground.
It almost seems that the more minimal the chosen object is the greater the stimulus he gets from it.  His two drawings of a male and a female torso are primarily differentiated by section of a Protractor inserted in the latter to suggest the female cycle. At first sight a small consideration, but on reflection a subtle one. Patience is needed in one’s initial approach to his work, in order not to be tempted to walk away from it because it seems too minute or alternatively too pale in colour, thus failing to grab attention. But close application will reward one with the discovery of the tenderness revealed in the image of Veronica's veil in "Edessa" or indeed in "Annunciation" where all the thousands of images which we have known in the past are now replaced by a visual metaphor of an event which was never observed by other than the two participants.
Joe Mcgill, through his own invention of images, inspired frequently by the found relics of nature like twigs or fronds, seeks a different reality of nature than is to be found in its normal outer appearance.  He penetrates his subconscious by a private intellectual effort achieves a new and quivering image which he floats or suspends in his white boxes.  As a result, we find ourselves confronted with little two or three-dimensional figures of great purity and balance often seemig to be as transparent as a shadow and capable of being blown away by "breath” But the closer we examine them the more secure and precisely described they seem.   Indeed they appear to be non-representational figures, but his titles permit us to share his allusions and discoveries in the process of creativity.
In first one-man exhibitions one usually searches for the artists or areas of influence. In Joe Mcgill’s case, I have a strong feeling that his primary impulse was a desire to get away from all the influences and movements which abound in modern art. He was not satisfied with any exploration of existing methods of painting or sculpture until he got on the track of these remarkable little images, so poignant and austere, his own private, visual poetry.  But he also takes on themes which have engaged the greatest masters of all time from The Creation to The Resurrection. The latter, in this case being symbolised by "The Empty Tomb". It is surprising that he has embarked on such immense themes, but one suspects that he is more concerned to explore new ideas rather than to endeavor to make large statements.  His future progress and development are cause for the greatest interest because of his ability to evoke a new experience of the world we know.

James White.