Abstract and distorted figurative painter.

Iain Maclean is Scottish, Polish/Swedish, born and brought up in Zambia, on the Congo border and Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. He moved to London and studied at Goldsmiths College and then Byam Shaw/St Martins College. He became an advertising copywriter and then creative director, at a number of leading London advertising agencies, where he won over 40 creative awards. He left advertising in 2016 to concentrate on art.

‘Influenced by both African and European art (I was born in Zambia), I create distorted figurative work and abstracts on a variety of themes. My earliest influences were African and later, European art - the latter, from books. My attitude to art can be traced back to an incident when I was 13 in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, I discovered some prehistoric cave paintings in a mysterious place called the Matopos. So, for me, art has always been magical; above money, pretty decoration, beauty, slavish realism, hyper-realism and superficialities. As Georgia O’Keefe said, “I found I could say things with colour and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.”

I know I should specialise but I’m always exploring different themes and ideas, such as: politics; relationships; the search for God; slavery (my mother was a slave of the USSR); war and human and organic forms.’