Messums London is pleased to present for the second time a series of work from Australian-based artist Euan Macleod (b. 1956). With a 40-year artistic career and over 100 solo exhibitions behind him, Macleod continues to create vivid and fresh work. An eminent painter in Australia and New Zealand, this new collection of work follows the artist on a journey throughout the UK; interpreting new and different landscapes with his particular style. Best known for his landscapes in which expressive figures roam, this series of works on paper considers the landscape in terms of the setting for human activity – past, present or future – and of places infused with human history. Painting en plein air is an important part of Macleod’s practice, enriching the work he does in the studio. Being part of the landscape and observing it first hand, results in a deeper understanding of each new place, encouraging him not to fall back on cliches or rehearsed techniques, but instead to rediscover an emotional connection with the land.
This recent collection of work was predominantly created during a sojourn in the UK in 2024; the pieces trace the artist’s journey to the northwest coast of Scotland, and the Isle of Skye, via Wiltshire in the west of England, London, Brighton on the south coast, and the east coast of Suffolk. An avid traveller, Macleod is attracted to the drama of particular landscapes and found the wild, remote, mountainous terrain of West Scotland particularly inspiring, reminding him in many ways of his native New Zealand. Expressionistically rendered, the Memories of Travel works are snapshots of the artist’s experience of unfamiliar places.
In the studio, cut off from the actual landscape, he recreates and emphasises aspects of what he has observed, retaining its authenticity, but adding elements of his own emotional memory of a given place. The landscape becomes an internal one; a space for the artist, with figures introduced to emphasise the human presence.
“It feels kind of like imagining a landscape and where I might fit in it. The landscape changes to accommodate me and the environment I’m creating helps me to find my place. In the finished work, there’s not a need for it to look like a specific place although it’s often based on one and the figure may have morphed into multiple people or have disappeared completely but it’s important to imagine that human connection.
I very much feel a presence of myself in this landscape…. With a new place you can be accused of being a tourist and not having any knowledge of it, or you need to live somewhere (or have traditional ties to the land) before you can truly understand it. These facts are probably true but it’s also true that a tourist brings fresh eyes and will often see things you’ve never noticed.”
With a deeply emotive sensibility, Macleod’s quest for new ways to see the figure ground relationship, the viewer is captured by a resonance in his observations. These places are everywhere, and he is all of us, watching the world and its day-to-day moments.
