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 action of colour and mark upon the canvas. Like the weather, paint can be wonderfully unpredictable and constantly changing and I try to create a constantly changing surface, harnessing the fluidity and dynamism of the medium. Through the rhythm of work, I am trying to move from the representation of something seen to the reconstruction of something felt.
"To see the breathtaking vitality of McClenaghen's work is to be reminded of Joan Eardley's late output. For both artists, painting is a way of keeping pace with nature, spatially, temporally and emotionally." Laura Vida, Scottish Field Magazine - August 2021
I studied at the Glasgow School of Art, the University of Huddersfield, University of Liverpool and the University of Chester and I was until 2020 Programme Leader for Fine Art at the Wrexham School of Art, Glyndwr University. I then went part time in order to focus more on painting and exhibiting.
I also write about art practice with book chapters recently published by Q-Art and Black Dog, London and have presented papers on painting at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester and to the National Association for Fine Art Education."
Artists