Robert Macdonald

Robert was born in 1935 in Spilsby/Lincolnshire. When he was ten years old, his family emigrated to Zew Zealand where he went to school. Eventually, in 1958 he decided to return to Britain on his own and in 1959/60 and 1971/2 he studied painting and printmaking at the Central School of Art in London. His tutors there were Keith Vaughan, Mervyn Peake and Cecil Collins. A special treat was his involvement in the etching workshop run by Merlin Evans, where techniques were deeply influenced by the avant garde experiments of S.W.Hayter. In the meantime he worked as a journalist: during the 1960s in Fleet Street as Commonwealth Correspondent for the Scotsman (specialist interest in the progress of African independence movements). In the I970's he was Chief Diplomatic Correspondent for the Central Office of Information, travelling widely overseas in delegations led by Britain's Foreign Secretaries. In 1976 he gave up this work and, until 1979, did postgraduate studies in painting at the Royal College of Art/Courtauld Institute (MA painting). From 1980 to 1982 he was again at the Central School of Art in London doing Advanced Studies in Printmaking. He has lived in Wales since 1989 and has his studio in Abersefin near Brecon; member of the Welsh Group & the Watercolour Society of Wales.
Influences: Paul Nash, David Jones, Jackson Pollock, German Expressionism, Chinese flung art, Tribal art.
He is the author of several books on New Zealand and the Maori, amongst them 'The Fifth Wind' illustrated with his own linocuts.

Artist's Statement: "Since coming to live in Wales, much of my painting has been based on the farming and mountain landscape around my home in the Brecon hills. But there has always been an element of fantasy in my painting fuelled by my interest in myth. I like to use paint freely and expressionistically."

In 1997 sculptor Stephen Duncan wrote of Macdonald's art that his early works were created in New Zealand and that by the 1960s his paintings were influenced by his life as a journalist. Large-scale American paintings affected his working methods but he remained an isolated figure, following his own individual enthusiasms. During the 1970s his painting explored turbulent childhood memories of the early 1940s. In the 1980s, influenced by Jungian theories of the creative unconscious, he became preoccupied with imagery from dream and myth. This interest combined with the Welsh landscape have recently created a series of works in different media in which he has explored the local myth of Llyn-y-Fan Fach, a magical little lake beneath Mynydd Du, the Black Mountain. There are many layers to the legend, which some say dates back to the Bronze Age, when iron was a magical and dangerous material and was only just beginning to make its appearance in the Welsh hills. It has a powerful elemental structure speaking of discovery, of loss and of journeys into and out of the unknown, which have fascinated the artist. Nowadays animals and birds, both mythic and real, vie with people and the landscape for a central place in his picture-making, as they do in tribal art.

Teaching Experiences:
From 1992/94 Part-time Lecturer, Access course and printmaking, Hereford College of Art; 1984/89 Part-time Lecturer, Cultural studies and printmaking, Maidstone and Canterbury Colleges of Art, Kent; 1980/90 Part-time Lecturer, various colleges (e.g. Maidstone & Canterbury Art Colleges).

Public Collections: Brecknock Museum & Art Gallery/Brecon; Victoria and Albert Museum print collection, London (etching 'Journey to the Sorcerer' purchased by the V&A); Ferens Art Gallery, Hull; Contemporary Art Society of Wales, Cardiff.

Awards: 1994 winner in the Sunday Times/Singer & Friedlander Watercolour Competition; 1996 winner of the Collins & Brown Award; 1997 bursary from the Welsh Arts Council; 1998 again winner in the Sunday Times/Singer & Friedlander Watercolour Competition; 2005 Royal Watercolour Society 21st century competition, 1st prize by Paintmakers Winsor & Newton.

Commission: 2004 private commission (Mr.&Mrs.R.Field) for a large painting of the Brecon Beacons; 2004 the illustration (25 wood cuts) of the Old Stile Press Artist's Book on John Donne's love poems 'Where Many Shipwrack'.

International Links:
exhibitions abroad: 1955 1st solo show at the Hamilton Art Gallery/New Zealand; 1959 touring exhibition '25 British Printmakers' to South America in which he showed his 'Mounted Knight' (other participants were Graham Sutherland, John Piper, Michael Rothenstein, Michael Ayrton); 1962 group exhibition in Johannesburg/South Africa; 1990 solo show at Portfolio Gallery Auckland/New Zealand;

activities abroad=1954-56 assisted to run the Waikato Arts Society Gallery in Hamilton/NZ.

To contact the artist directly: e-mail abersefin@aol.com or telephone 01874 638085.