Elaine Woo MacGregor

I am a Scottish born Chinese figurative painter trained in the Glasgow School Art in 1999-2003. My paintings are inspired from personal life experiences and stories of people and places. A feeling of story-telling weaves through my work. The images depict stories drawn from everyday life to dreams, films and folklore. Recent work includes melting glaciers, watercolour portraits of icons in their youth, portraits of front-line workers, still life paintings, and depiction of motherhood and children. As diverse as the themes suggests, my work is quietly political, contemporary, and personal.

Colours, light and space is important in my work as well as capturing an atmospheric mood and a psychological sense of place.

I often work in alla prima style, combining painting en plein air with studio practice, working in a range of mediums such as charcoal, soft pastels, Chinese ink, watercolours, acrylics and oils. My emphasis on brush strokes and gestural mark making is similar to Chinese painting style Xie-Yi. A lyrical, freehand brush and ink style with looseness, energy, reduction of information and composition at its central focus. To me painting and drawing is tactile and a sensory experience at times volatile, my work encapsulates western and eastern painting styles.

I have always been attracted to the thought-provoking qualities of narrative work by painters like Xu Daoning, Guo Xi, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Edouard Vuillard, Paula Modersohn-Becker and Ivon Hitchens.