ROBERT MACLAURIN
WORKS FROM THE STUDIOS
Robert Maclaurin
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In a world in which we are constantly bombarded with images of one sort or another, we might be forgiven for forgetting much of what we see. Yet there are occasions when we see a picture that resonates with us for one reason or another and is committed to memory. Years later we may be perfectly capable of bringing it to mind, even in detail, and for a brief moment we may feel that we are standing before the pictureonce again, taking it in, relishing it just as we did when we first set eyes on it.
This happened to me with several of Edward Hopper’s works, and with a number of other well-known paintings that I encountered when, all those years ago, I first became interested in art. I suspect that many people have that experience when they see their first Vermeer, or come face to face with one of Hockney’s swimming pool paintings. These are impressions that we carry with us, and can summon up in a moment. It is particularly pleasurable if we remember the circumstances in which we first saw the picture; if we can recall where we were and who we were with. That act of contextual recollection can add a great deal to our experience of art.
I have a very clear memory of how I became aware of the work of Robert Maclaurin. It was in 1998. There was a picture in the newspaper of the painting that had just been awarded the Noble-Grossart Art Prize. This was a Scottish art prize jointly established by a friend of mind, Angus Grossart, a man who did a great deal in his lifetime to support the visual arts in Scotland. The newspaper photograph of the painting made a very strong impression on me; it was one of those landscapes in which the artist depicts small conical protuberances, rather like anthills, stretching out across a plain. The predominant colours were browns and yellows, and it was certainly not a Scottish scene. But where was it, I wondered? I decided that it was a landscape of the imagination – a bit like Africa, a bit like Australia, a bit like parts of North America. But location did not matter: this was a stunning painting.
Some time elapsed before I saw Maclaurin’s work again, but now I was on the look-out for it. I saw some of his paintings on show in an Edinburgh gallery, and then on-line. I thought that I would like to add him to my collection, and eventually I did so when I purchased at auction an immense painting of an extraordinary landscape in which baobab trees march across a wide plain, looked down upon by a towering escarpment. Not long after acquiring this painting, I visited a show the artist was having in Victoria. There I was torn between his extraordinary, rather haunting studies of the Australian bush and his luminescent interpretation of the West Highlands of Scotland. I opted for a Scottish painting, and we now enjoy his masterly capture of the strange silver-blue light of a part of Scotland of which my wife and I are particularly fond.
I have spent some time trying to work out why I find Maclaurin’s painting so appealing. I think that one of the reasons why they resonate with me is his ability to portray emptiness, which is, after all, a marked characteristic of the places he chooses to paint, whether in his Australian or his Scottish work. Hopper does that of course, and I decided that the emotional effect that Maclaurin paintings have on me is very closely related to the effect that I feel when I look at Hopper. And yet there is a subtle difference: Maclaurin’s paintings strike me as friendly. Yes, he may be painting a wilderness scene, but there is none of the loneliness that you find in Hopper. Indeed, when you look more closely, in many of Maclaurin’s landscapes you will find a tiny figure. This alleviates any sense of desolation that an empty landscape might engender. There is also something very appealing about the artist’s palette: the colours in these paintings are not in any sense cold.
Another reason why I so admire Maclaurin’s painting is the forcefulness of the features that he singles out for attention. There is a lot of geology in these paintings, and he draws our attention to a whole range of strange land forms and rather exotic-looking vegetation. This gives the paintings a richness that often eludes other landscape painters. Nature here is clearly and strongly delineated; there is no misty ambivalence in these remarkable paintings.
But most important of all, I suspect, is the haunting nature of his work. This is art that makes a deep and lingering impression. These paintings could be by no other painter: therein lies their importance. These are beautiful, courteous paintings that leave us more in love with the world about us than we were before we saw them – and that, I think, is a good a goal as any for a painter to pursue.
Sir Alexander McCall Smith CBE, 2024
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Robert Maclaurin (b. 1961) is a Scottish artist who lives and works primarily in Scotland and Australia. Predominantly landscape–based, his initial en plein air paintings and drawings lead to major works in the studio, capturing the contrasting environments of the Scottish and Australian wilderness.
Robert Maclaurin graduated from Edinburgh College of Art (1983) with a Drawing and Painting BA (Hons) degree and a Post Graduate Diploma with distinction (1984). Since then his work has been recognised with numerous awards, grants and residencies.
After a Royal Scottish Academy travel scholarship to Italy in 1984, Maclaurin won a Turkish Government Scholarship, painting in Istanbul for 15 months. This experience inspired and informed his work for over 15 years with many returns to far eastern Anatolia.
In 1993-4 he was awarded the highly prized Durham Cathedral Artist in Residence, spending a year living and working in the Cathedral community. The following year in 1995-6 he was awarded a Sir Robert Menzies Fellowship from The University of London, winning an artists residency at The Dunmoochin Foundation, former home and studio of Clifton Pugh, set in bushland north of Melbourne. John Olsen and Fred Williams had also worked at this location. Using Dunmoochin as a base, Robert painted around Australia for 18 months. He was subsequently awarded a Distinguished Talent Visa and Permanent Residency enabling him to set up a home and studio in Central Victoria. In 2016 and 2019 he completed an Artist in Residency at Ateliers Höherweg, Düsseldorf, Germany.
Maclaurin’s work of mountainous and arid regions in Turkey, Scotland and Australia have won him critical acclaim and recognition, including first prize in the prestigious Noble Grossart Scottish Painting Award, the James Farrell Self–portrait Painting Prize (Australia) and the Manet Maldon Landscape Prize (Australia), as well as commissions from The Scottish National Portrait Gallery, The Dundee Contemporary Print Centre and the English National Trust.
Today, Maclaurin’s works are held in important public, corporate and private collections worldwide which, together with a selection of stand-out solo shows and group exhibitions, are listed opposite.
Gorge in Shadow, Oil on Cedar Panel, 18 x 25 cm, £650