Will MacLean

Will MacLean

Will MacLean was born in Inverness in 1941. He was a midshipman (1957-59) before attending Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen (1961-65) and then the British School in Rome in 1966 as part of a year on Gray’s Travelling Scholarship. The resulting Ring-net Project, a body of over 400 drawings was exhibited at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, where it entered the permanent collection. In 1981 he was appointed lecturer at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee, where he later became professor of Fine Art in 1994 and in 2004-06, Senior Research Fellow and now Emeritus Professor. In 1999 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of St. Andrews, winning the Scottish Arts Council Creative Scotland Award in the same year. In 2005 he was awarded an MBE for services to Education and the Arts. MacLean has exhibited widely since 1967. Solo exhibitions have included Driftworks at Dundee Contemporary Arts, 2001 and exhibitions with Art First, London since 1994. Group exhibitions include Worlds in a Box, Edinburgh Arts Centre, Whitechapel Arts Gallery, London(1994-95) Contemporary British Art in Print, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (1995) which featured a Night of Islands, a set of ten etchings published in 1991. His work is in public collections including Arts Council of Great Britain; The British Museum; Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow City Art Galleries; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Scottish Arts Council; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. McMaster Museum, Canada; Yale Centre for British Art, Newhaven, USA. In 2009 he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Aberdeen University. He lives and works in Tayport, Fife with his wife Marian Leven.

Will MacLean exhibited at Éigse in 1995.

Art collection

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Origins

Set up in 1992, The Carlow Art Collection is a voluntary community initiative that has been surrounded by goodwill and generosity from the people of Carlow. It has expanded into a diverse collection of work with artists from around the world. CAC became a fully registered charity in 2018. The home of our art collection is in Carlow College. The Carlow Art Collection is free to view in the front halls of Carlow College, Monday to Friday, and in the garden every day of the year.

Today

The art works in the permanent collection include painting, print, drawing, sculpture, sound, photography, live art, film and activism, with more to come. The collection and CAC projects reflect a broad range of art by over thirty artists, many of whom visited, exhibited, engaged with or lived in the area.

Our Goal

The CAC is deeply indebted to the artists who contribute to the collection, to its board members past and present, and to the many people and organisations that support it technically and financially. The Carlow Art Collection will continue to expand on the ideas of what art is and what an art collection can be, and become.