Mick Fleetwood, the drummer and cofounder of legendary rock band Fleetwood Mac, has a solo show of his photography at Toronto’s Liss Gallery, reports the Canadian Press. The exhibition, titled “Reflections,” is made up of more than 30 photographs, many featuring hand-painted details.
The 67-year-old drummer admits to some insecurities about his new medium, telling the Canadian Press that even though he’s grown confident in his musical abilities after a lifetime in the industry, he’s not sure how his photographs will be perceived. “I pretty much know that people love Fleetwood Mac…I don’t really know whether someone’s going to like a picture that I’ve had the balls to put on a wall and say that I’ve done it.”
Despite Fleetwood’s concerns, he has been interested in photography for nearly his whole music career, having been introduced to the medium by Fleetwood Mac bandmate John McVie in the late 1960s. The two shared a dark room back in the days when the whole band was living together in a house.
“I’m the one who’s got probably more photographs of this band’s candid history,” Fleetwood recalls. “And that’s how it started, just snapping pictures of all the lovely places we traveled to, and gigs and moments, just like anyone who gets into doing family photography.”
A native of England, Fleetwood has also photographed the countryside in Wiltshire, outside Salisbury, and documented the process of moving his aging mother to Maui seven years ago. “I wanted to remember that time. I wanted mum to take some of the country that she lived in with her,” he said. “I wanted these pictures of the river and the trees and all the lovely roads and things around my mother’s house…so I took these photographs to make a chronicle of what that had meant to our family.”
He began photographing more seriously 12 years ago, and started tentatively showing his work in local Maui galleries. “A lot of people don’t do things because they don’t want to be rejected, which is human nature,” Fleetwood admits. “But what we tend not to like to hear, especially with our friends, is ‘Why wouldn’t you do that? You could’ve.’ Would’ve, could’ve, should’ve…If you find something to do that is some form of creative outlet, I think it’s really healthy to say, ‘Why not?’”