As I carefully walk around the bustling Van Der Plas Gallery and review the writhing, whimsical, topsy-turvy paintings of Jason McLean at the opening of his new exhibition, “I’m as Normal as Blueberry Pie,” I can’t help but think that the artist recently told me he was diagnosed with schizophrenia three decades ago. This brain disorder is a difficult and disorienting mental and spiritual place in which to reside, often filled with high fantasy and abject terror in equal measure. I know this because I have a close relative who suffers from the same mental health challenge—and I’ve stared right into the face of it during the darkest of hours.

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After years of consistent treatment, medication management and some lifestyle changes, McLean’s doctors say he no longer exhibits the classic cognitive and psychotic symptoms found in patients with the illness. Now, thriving in an extraordinarily prolific and creative period of his mid career, McClean is in, well, a better place. His work makes it apparent, however, that he isn’t completely out of the brain-battling and stress-inducing thicket—but at least he’s tackling issues driven by the many collisions of accelerated urban life that can make any of us feel crazy by mythologizing and mapping out its meaty meta-adjacent innards for all to see.

The work in this comprehensive solo show, which goes back twenty years until the present day, is a representation of McLean’s many-layered wacky-but-weighty worlds and living realities. It’s reminiscent of 16th-century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch’s darkened wild piles of human folly and failings but populated by Dr. Seuss’s out-there, slap-happy, colorful cartoon protagonists. I also feel the force of Basquiat’s brutal barbarism, smell a whiff of Philip Guston’s brilliant........

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