TWO PERSON EXHIBITION - CATE INGLIS AND LESLEY MCLAREN

11 September - 9 October 2022

LESLEY MCLAREN

Lesley McLaren was born in Glasgow and graduated from Exeter College of Art and Design (Painting) in 1982.

She has been exhibiting steadily with a number of galleries throughout the UK for the past 25 years and has established a strong reputation. She paints from memories, stories and feelings. This often gives her work an ethereal quality, seldom depicting specific real geographical locations, but more involving the mind and spirit. She collects images from her camera, sketchbooks and memory references, often merging them into an imaginary composition.

Recently she has developed a strong passion for painting birds from her garden — detailed simple studies, uncluttered and with the entire focus being on the character and intricacy of the bird itself. Her paintings reflect the fascination she has with the natural world, mostly that which surrounds her in her immediate environment. She lives in the Scottish Borders, where the landscape and light is beautiful and varied — a rich source of inspiration, from Belted Galloway cattle roaming on the hills to Scottish Blackface sheep, silver birch trees and barn owls to wrens. She lives in a small community beside a busy farm where there is an abundance of subjects to paint.