Interview: Alan Macdonald - Crossing the lines

Published on Monday 1 June 2009 19:22

THE serious expressions, the self-important poses ... there's no doubt about it: the Old Master paintings of the 17th century are practically crying out to be lampooned. And on the surface at least, that's exactly what Carnoustie-based artist Alan Macdonald does.

In his irreverent mash-ups, stately-looking cardinals zoom up and down on Vespas; plastic Boots carrier bags float around the pre-industrial landscape; and Venus, goddess of love, is pulled hither and yon on a little trolley made out of a box of Surf washing powder.

Macdonald freely admits that it's the thrill of transgression – "the 'you shouldn't do it' thing" – that inspires him to create these images, but he isn't simply having a cheap laugh at the expense of Rembrandt, Velasquez et al. Look a little more closely at his work, and you'll see a second layer of meaning, one that holds your attention long after the initial belly laugh has subsided.

In his studio, a former bank, Macdonald draws my attention to a half-completed painting, one that will eventually depict a puritanical-looking woman taking the top off a bottle of Heinz Tomato Ketchup. The initial laugh comes from the incongruity of a puritan wielding a ketchup bottle, but the painting's title, Salome, gives the image a more sinister edge.

"I think too often, art works reveal all their secrets... 'boof'... like that," he says. "You have to have something that catches the eye, but then ideally there should be something else underneath that, something that people don't realise straight away."

Macdonald says he has always been fascinated by the Old Masters, although his cheeky habit of juxtaposing contemporary high- street brands with 17th century oil painting is a relatively new departure. Born in Malawi in 1962, he attended Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee. The lecturers there tried to persuade him to switch to sculpture, but Macdonald ignored them and stuck to painting. After graduation, following a few frustrating years in Scotland, he moved to London, where he did building work to finance his nascent career as an artist.

"Friends were saying 'come on, put your paintings under your arm and go round the galleries' but I said 'no, I'm not ready, I know I'm not ready and I'll do it when I am ready'. I think everybody eventually forgot about me, wrote me off, but one day I just felt 'it's clicked' so I decided to rent a gallery.

"Only trouble was, I couldn't afford to rent one, so I went to this place called Gallery 47 which is opposite the British Museum. The gallery had hessian walls and it needed redecorating so I said 'look, if you painted all this white it would look fantastic – I'll redecorate it all for you if you give me a week-long show'. That bloody hessian must have taken five coats, but in the end it looked great."

The gamble paid off, because the Gallery 47 exhibition brought Macdonald to the attention of the Bruton Street Gallery in Mayfair, which has represented him ever since.

"They didn't necessarily get the paintings," he says, "but they knew they could sell them."

At this time, the mid-to-late 1990s, Macdonald's work owed much to Magritte, featuring compartmentalised images and often undercut by surrealist texts.

"I don't like all the surrealists, but I do really like Magritte," he says. "He used to say some great things, like 'it's very easy to be surreal by sticking a lobster on a phone but it's very much more difficult to find a poetic idea like putting an egg in a birdcage'. They're much harder to come by, those ideas that have real poetry to them."

Macdonald's goal, it seems, is to dream up as many of these poetic ideas as he can and commit them to canvas, and over the years his efforts have won him a small but loyal following. Although he sells well in London, his work is particularly popular on the east coast of the United States.

"I sell more there than anywhere else," he says. "I don't know why. Maybe they respond to the nostalgia in the paintings – maybe they're craving history in a way we're not."

The artist's US profile is set to receive an almighty boost next year, when his work will be featured in a show of British art at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC. Located just over the road from the White House, the Corcoran is a serious institution, and Macdonald's work will be shown alongside some seriously big names.

"I'm exhibiting with all of my heroes," he says, "Turner, Gainsborough, Francis Bacon... when I digested that I just went 'Oh shit! This is terrifying!' So I said to the guy doing the show 'whatever you do, please can you hang my work very sympathetically... and a very long way away from Francis Bacon.'"

&#149 Alan Macdonald's work is on show at the Eduardo Alessandro Studios, Dundee, 6-30 June as part of a group show entitled A Master Stroke. Tel: [phone] or visit www.eastudios.com