JOHN MCLEAN (BRITISH 1939-2019)
HULA YELLOW CENTRE - 1982
Signed, inscribed with title and dated verso, oil on canvas
62cm x 71cm (24.25in x 28in)
‘My works have no hidden meanings. To understand, all you have to do is look. Everything only works in relation to everything else in the painting… Looking triggers imagination and association… I only work with the feelings I can elicit with drawing, colour and surface… Instinct and spontaneity are crucial. Thought goes into it too, in the same way it does in singing and dancing.’ - John McLeanJohn McLean’s commitment to abstraction was unwavering. From his early 1970s canvases to his mature 21st century compositions, McLean painted with gestural intuition, investing his work with formal and tonal rhythm. In doing so, he was upholding a family tradition for abstraction: his father Talbert McLean was also an artist who observed the tenets of Abstract Expressionism. However, beyond an exposure to his father’s work and ideas, John received little formal artistic training. Degrees in English and Art History at St. Andrews University and the Courtauld Institute respectively introduced him to cultural movements and historical exemplars and provided him with ample creative stimuli. So, too, did the natural world. He maintained that his diligently studied approach to his source material was entirely compatible with the creation of spontaneous, expressive abstract imagery. McLean resided in London for much of his life, teaching at various art schools and painting all the while. His first solo exhibition was held in 1975 at Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, and in 1977 his work was included in the Four Abstract Painters exhibition at the Fruitmarket Gallery, where the influential critic Clement Greenberg made an opening address (Greenberg stayed with the McLeans in Arbroath where he encountered John’s father Talbert, whom Greenberg observed was a happier man than Mark Rothko or Jackson Pollock). A 1981 residency at the Emma Lake workshop in Saskatchewan, Canada proved particularly formative, with the work he produced subsequently inspired by the wide horizons and intensity of light. Numerous solo exhibitions of John McLean’s work have since been staged across Britain and America, and in 2017 the major retrospective Like Singing and Dancing: John McLean’s Abstract Paintings was held at the Guangdong Museum of Art in Guangzhou, China.The three works featured in this sale were gifts over the years from John McLean to Ian Montgomerie, a childhood family friend in Scotland. Their friendship, which revolved around a shared passion for art, lasted until Ian’s sudden death in 2003.