Angus Macpherson’s paintings reflect transformation in both the natural and human realms

STREAM REFLECTION, ACRYLIC, 36 X 33

Since 1983, when he turned to painting full time, Angus Macpherson has become so well known for his luminous, billowing skyscapes that people actually come up to him in his hometown of Albuquerque, NM, and say, “You’re the guy who does the storms and clouds.” Macpherson’s paintings of dramatic skies, often in radiantly translucent layers of acrylic inflected with twilight and dawn hues, are fluid compositions that register as simultaneously grand and intimate. It’s not surprising that he has an ardent, if moderately sized, following. (“I’ve never been famous, but I’ve been a middleweight,” he says dryly.) His stormscapes and cloudscapes welcome the viewer into “reading” the amorphous visual space and provoke emotional as well as analytical responses to their imaginary dimensions.

In representing what human beings look up at and study with daily, habitual, necessary interest, his paintings play with our vast mental libraries of skies, and they put before us the rich contradiction of ordinariness and extraordinariness. Meanwhile, there is a statement being made—these skies are neither brooding nor ominous, even when they suggest potentially violent weather, but they aren’t clear blue expanses, either. They are, essentially, images of unceasing change, of order giving constant way to disorder and new order. And, in a manner that underscores their subject, the paintings’ surfaces hover between abstraction and representation.

Macpherson also ventures outside his extremely successful skyscape mode to paint figures, interiors, and other genres. His most recent work features what would seem to be as far from illuminated skies as you can get—night scenes of figures in urban settings. But it gets to the heart of Macpherson’s true interest in painting to note that his skyscapes and city nocturnes are more similar than different. The natural near-chaos of skies and clouds is actually paralleled in the darkness that blots out the geometries of man-made cities. “What I enjoy about night scenes,” explains the artist, “are all the sources of light. What you are able to see in the city at night is much less organized because of the darkness. Painting at night takes a very patient observer.” The natural world may be in ceaseless flux, but so is the civilized world, and, oddly enough, darkness reveals its shifts and transformations especially well.

AUTUMN BREWING, ACRYLIC, 34 X 80

Imagery aside, much of what intrigues Macpherson is simply the paint itself—especially what it does on its own once he’s put it on a surface. Whether roiling clouds or nighttime reflections, the business of getting acrylic onto a flat surface and seeing how it bends to visual interpretation is the same. “It was the process of painting that originally turned me on to art,” says Macpherson. “My paintings celebrate the act of painting.”

The qualities and potential of acrylic paint are crucial to Macpherson’s ambitions. “Every painter develops a particular language,” says the artist. “I’ve developed mine using acrylic. The important features of acrylic for me are that I can paint with it as if it were watercolor and get wet, translucent effects. Yet acrylic can also be opaque, so you can change your mind and paint over it. Plus it dries fast, especially in New Mexico.” It is a medium that suits Macpherson, who has taken change itself as his subject. “The artist manipulates the paint,” he says in his formal statement about his work, “but the random behavior of the paint may best represent the random behavior of the world. The painter’s job is to learn when to hold back and when to let go.” He adds, “When I begin a painting I may have a particular image in mind, but I just start by putting paint on the canvas, and the painting helps me by suggesting things. There’s a randomness that congeals into an image. I’ve tried to understand that concept as long as I’ve been painting: to have something chaotic and bring meaning out of it.”

It’s helpful to hear directly from Macpherson what motivates him in his art, because if all you knew about him were his paintings and the name Angus Macpherson, you might come to the conclusion that he was a Scottish artist with a sunny/dreamy palette and a mostly inner landscape for inspiration.

Born in 1952, Macpherson is, in fact, a third-generation New Mexican. “Way back my family came from Scotland,” explains the artist. “My grandfather moved from Ontario, Canada, to New Mexico in 1890 to help build the railroads.” His father was an attorney and a judge. “Their names were both Daniel Angus Macpherson, as is mine. But I’m the first to go by just Angus,” he explains, “which is fun because people seem to think of me as a character out of a book…”