In my paintings I like to explore the intersection of modernism, recreational pursuits, and the lure of escapism. The architectural elements and interiors in my oil paintings are usually fictionalized interpretations of homes that transcend the ordinary and evoke a certain time and place often with a sense of nostalgia. My aim is to utilize colour that is alluring and evocative but at times even otherworldly and arresting. These residential "fortresses" often keep the natural world at bay through landscaping, swimming pools, fences and decor. I am interested in images of the sublime and the connections between material worlds and natural worlds. Ultimately, my art is about collective longing, the things we can control and the things we cannot.

Based in Bright’s Grove, Ontario, Ian McLean was educated at The University of Guelph and has exhibited widely at a variety of public galleries, commercial venues, and artist-run spaces. His work is found in private collections throughout Canada and internationally and he has been the recipient of numerous awards and honours. A contestant on the inaugural season of CBC’s “Landscape Artist of the Year: Canada”, Ian’s work has also been featured in film production and various publications. He is currently a member of the international jury of the Prisma Art Prize based in Rome.

There is something of the conjuror in most painters. After all, the medium is all about tricks and licks, and good painters have the uncanny ability to create whole new universes; ones that are often so enticing that you inevitably give into your weaker instincts and throw any critical distance out the window. Seductive alternative worlds, resplendent with chromatic exuberance and dream-like possibility. McLean's emotionally wrought depictions of bungalows with requisite swimming pools, enveloped in storms of hyped-up colour, speak with a romanticism that can only be described as "high sublime in low places". The skies are always aglow in these types of places, and one gets the sense that the homeowners are away on holiday, or somewhere in the house either cowering or bonking, or probably vaporized. There is something oddly unsettling in McLean's light, which hovers between Turner's nocturnes and forest fire skies at night. Not quite threatening but at least a little disconcerting (disconcerting enough to maybe wake the neighbours ... as long as it isn't too late because you know they get to sleep early).
 

catalogue essay (excerpt)
by John Kissick
2018

"Elusive Utopia" Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery, Sarnia,

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