Andrew Mackenzie

Andrew Mackenzie confronts heterogeneous notions concerning the history of art, aesthetics, and man's relationship to his natural environment. He mixes deliberate references to classical landscapes, modernist painting, and architecture. Whilst considering non romantic functional urban sites his work simultaneously alludes to an aesthetic which indulges our romantic notions of wilderness. He also brings to the fore the modernist idea of the physicality of the painted surface through the layering of objects; car parks, quarries, reservoirs, trees, stone and gravel.

Inspired by his native Scotland, Mackenzie's paintings show the man made and the natural world irrevocably entangled; we see plants and trees reclaim quarry sites and witness the sinuous lines of branches in conflict with the hard straight lines of skeletal modernist structures. His work visually questions whether it is now possible to draw the distinction between 'natural' and 'construct' or indeed if it ever has been.

Mackenzie graduated with an MFA from Edinburgh College of Art in 1993. Solo exhibitions include the critically acclaimed 'Delicate Ground' which formed part of the 2006 Edinburgh International Festival and 'Ten Decades' held at the City Art Centre in Edinburgh 2008. Other selected earlier exhibitions include 'Viewpoint', at the National Galleries of Scotland, Banff, 2005; 'Sunlight on Grey Painted Steel' at the Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, 2003; and 'New Work', at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Leeds 2002. Collections include; Flemings Collection; The London Royal Academy; City Art Centre, Edinburgh; Halifax; Bank of Scotland; The Bank of America; and Meyer Brown. Most recently in 2009 he was awarded a significant Scottish Arts Council grant towards research and development, and in November 2010 was part of a select group of exhibiting established artists chosen to celebrate 250 years of Edinburgh College of Art in the exhibition 'The Secret Confession'. Future projects include a two-person show with Graeme Todd in Czytelnia Szuki, Gliwice, Poland in November 2012.