John McClenaghen

I am the Grandson of a ploughman and nephew to a shepherd and a grieve, or farm foreman. As a child I viewed my world with wonder. I grew up in a town but much of my mother’s side of the family remained in farming and I would visit them with my parents which felt like moving between two very different worlds, perhaps heightening my experience of both and influencing the way I look at the landscape to this day. My early years were partly spent on farms around Stirlingshire and on the East Lothian coast where the land meets the sea with only a narrow dune field between them, and as an artist I have constantly been drawn to the changing qualities of landscape and coast. I tend to return to the same locations repeatedly and work with colour from the outset, something that goes right back to my time as a student at the Glasgow School of Art.

I am interested in painting’s ability to relate experience by drawing parallels between the action of light and weather upon my subjects and the... [more]