painter born in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1956. He arrived in Sydney in 1981, and had his first exhibition the following year at Watters Gallery, East Sydney, where he has exhibited regularly ever since. He has gone on to exhibit his work across Australia – at Niagara Galleries, Melbourne; Victor Mace Fine Art, Brisbane and is included in many group exhibitions in public and private galleries every year. Macleod also shows regularly in New Zealand, at Brooke/Gifford Gallery, Christchurch and Bowen Galleries, Wellington.
Euan Macleod: The Painter in the Painting , is a major study of Macleod’s work. The publication of this book which traces three decades of Macleod’s career, coincided with an important retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work that started in Sydney at the S. H. Ervin Gallery, and traveled to Tweed River Art Gallery, Orange Regional Gallery, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Newcastle Region Art Gallery and the University of Queensland Art Museum.
In his foreword to Euan Macleod: The Painter in the Painting John McDonald writes:
The drama of Macleod’s life is all in his work – in the increasingly complex play of symbols that simultaneously conceals and reveals his thoughts and feelings, and in the energetic application of paint to a flat surface … He is a painter who finds his fulfilment in action rather than reflection. The imagery comes first; the meaning emerges gradually, almost reluctantly (2010).
From 1991 on, Macleod has painted haunting images of a single male figure in the Australian/New Zealand sea, sky and landscape. These figures are very often huge in relation to their surroundings – sitting inside burnt-out craters, or striding, arms extended out beyond their bodies to blend into mountains.
Macleod has won a number of awards, including, the Archibald Prize (1999), the Sulman Prize (2001), the Blake Prize of Religious Art (2006) and the Gallipoli Art Prize in 2009 (O’Brien, 2010).
His work is included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, USA), the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Wellington, NZ), the Christchurch Art Gallery (Christchurch, NZ), the National Gallery of Australia (Canberra, ACT), the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, VIC), and the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth, WA (O’Brien, 2010).
In 2011 the artist was living in Sydney, NSW.
- Writers:
- Legge, Geoffrey
- Date written:
- 2011
- Last updated:
- 2011
