Andrew Mack began painting in oils in his early teens but a fascination with ceramics led him to follow a degree course in 3Dimensional Design/Ceramic Sculpture and into a career in teaching.
He began painting again in earnest after finding inspiration in the panoramas of Turkey’s eastern steppe and the lakes of Kashmir in northern India.
In 1987 & 1988 he won the ‘Viewers Prize’ in the BBC TV Annual Art competition with large scale works ‘Shikara Man’ and ‘Open Water’ and was shortlisted again in 1989 with a three metre Kashmir lake scene with portrait ‘Ghulam Rasool’.
In late 1989 he left teaching to become a full time painter when he was commissioned by Operation Raleigh (now Raleigh International) to join them as Expedition Artist in Chile, South America.
Laguna de Lejía, one of a series of twenty paintings produced from the expedition was short listed for the 1990 BBC TV competition.
More recently he has won the ‘Visitors Prize’ in the Manchester Academy of Fine Art Open Exhibition for ‘Happier Days’ ~ a triple portrait of Kashmiri boatmen, and two further ‘Visitors Prizes’ in the Chester Open Exhibition with ‘The Musicians, Varanasi’ and ‘Troubled Water, Kashmir’.
‘Happier Days’ and ‘The Musicians’ were shortlisted for the ‘Not the Turner Prize’ at The Mall Galleries in London.
Although he is best known for his landscapes and portraits of India, other major series include British landscapes (in particular the river Thames), South America, Indonesia and Indo-China.
Commissions are undertaken at the Artist’s discretion.
He has retained a core of his favourite work which can be viewed by appointment.
Andrew Mack describes his paintings as ‘unashamedly photographic’.
By this he refers to his free use of photography both as a tool for recording his subjects and in dialogue with painting to explore or challenge our preconceptions of realism.
Photography allows him to capture fleeting effects of light on water and the landscape. He takes as many as 150 photos of a subject, which together with drawing and notes make the starting point for a painting in the studio.
Using the camera as a sketchbook solves a practical problem. As he says ‘the rigours of travel are not sympathetic to the transportation of large canvases’.
Since his preferred subjects are the lakes and mountains of remote regions such as the Himalayas and Kashmir, it is essential to travel light.
Thorough documentation of the subject enables Andrew to apply a rigorously even depth of focus in his paintings. Here he passes beyond the potential of the camera lens to create paintings of rare visual intensity.
The richness of the landscape detail in Andrew’s work is both appealing and a little unsettling. His paintings carry hints of the dreamlike world of surrealism. There is also a fragile quality in this intense pictorial relationship with the landscape which echoes the vulnerability of his subject.
Andrew has a strong personal interest in ecology and the damage being done to the planet by global expansion, multi-national companies, tourism and population growth. His interests and concerns are not confined to the remoter regions of the world. He paints other landscapes including the British countryside, which he sees as equally threatened by the destruction of the environment.
Courtesy of Ann Compton ~ Curator of pictures Liverpool University.
