Learning to Dance, 2019
Oil on linen
54” x 48”

Two people, one of high anxiety, the other curious and open, meet to dance for the first time under a bandshell. Arms and legs swirl about in ineptitude and clumsiness. An allegory about the beginnings of new love, the painting also features a checkerboard floor referring to the rectangular grid of the canvas, inferring that painting too is a kind of awkward dance.

Judge Shrug, (Help!), 2019
Oil on wood
25.5” x 21.5”

On a fictional plain undergoing catastrophe, a beatle-esque figure in judge’s robes raises open hands, feigning blamelessness. A tiny mouth offers no further clarity or opinion.

On A Pedestal, 2019
Oil on wood,
21.5” x 18”

Two women, or is it one? embrace or assist a puppet-like boy sculpture crouched on a pedestal. His blank eye and submissive posture suggest an internal negation of his position.

The Happy Astronaut, 2019
Oil on linen
22” x 22.5”

A portrait painted from an image of Harrison Schmitt, floating “upside-down” while returning from the moon during the Apollo 17 mission. The first scientist to walk on the moon, he described it as an “ infinite, giant trampoline”, suggesting that cross-country skis would be the best way to traverse the surface. Photographer of the famous “Blue Marble” portrait of Earth, his optimism about our planet is inspiring.

Hard to Swallow, 2019
Oil on wood
21.5” x 18”

A lone figure clutches his throat, choking in disbelief about the careless “spin” given to stewardship of our planet and peoples.

Selfie Crying, 2016-2019
Chalk pastel on cotton rag paper
30” x 22”

Based on an image of the artist’s face, Selfie Crying imagines a wide-eyed stunned sadness about the turn of events and change we are experiencing in our current world order

Apartment Arsonist, 2019
Chalk pastel on cotton rag paper
44” x 30.5”

Inspired by the horrific and tragic 2017 Grenfell tower fire in London, this work features a figure with limbs of fire and a body of a blackened apartment building, surrounded by swirling flame and smoke.

White’s Island, 2019
Chalk pastel on cotton rag paper
30” x 22”

Part oil-rig, part shanty-town, a future where polluting and isolating tribalism meets climate change.

Zoomorphic Redaction Series 1-4, 2019
Chalk pastel on cotton rag paper
30” x 22”

Solid flag-like rectangular blocks obfuscate gesticulating animalistic forms, suggesting that human-kind organized into nations over biological forms of organization lead to demise.

Containment, 2017
Oil on wood
97 x 130 cm

Broken Hotel Window, 2017
Oil on linen
60" x 52"

Cross Light I, 2013
Oil on wood
50 x 40 cm

From a Vanishing Point, 2016
Oil on wood
40" x 30"

Roundabout, 2016
Oil on canvas
40" x 30"

Some Like it Hot, 2015
Oil on canvas
48” x 40”

Interference II, 2016
Oil, alkyd enamel, and wax on wood
16" x 12”

IAN MACKAY

For over a decade, Ian Mackay has explored a quiet and intimate formalism to produce works that invoke a contemplative feeling while simultaneously referring to motifs, materials and strategies from an array of periods on the art-historical timeline. His paintings are open-ended investigations of how mark making shapes aesthetic experience. Sometimes the result of carefully observed depiction, or a mash-up of modernist and anti-modernist motifs, his paintings are both surprising and familiar. In a fanning-out kind of questioning, Mackay pursues interesting tensions between accident and intention, surface and depth, materiality and illusion, all the while searching for the immanent in painting.

Ian Mackay is a Canadian artist living in the Niagara Region where he maintains his studio. He completed his AOCA at Ontario College of Art in 1980 with studies in Photo-Electric Arts. In 2009 he completed a BFA at OCAD in Curatorial Studies and Integrated Media. Since 2009 Ian has concentrated exclusively on his painting practice and his work can be found in private collections.

Red Head Creative Series participation here.
For more information visit: imackay.ca
@ianmackayartist |@ianlmackay|#IanMackay