Da McLaren
2024 NZAFA President’s Prize award for Colonial Mutual Life Building, 1935, Lost Wellington Skyline [2024]
2022-2024 Ten works selected and shown at NZAFA exhibitions
2021 Painting inception
2020-2022 Architectural photographer focussing on Wellington’s heritage character
1990s – present:
- A career as a Senior Architectural Technician
- European travels in 1990, 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2023
- 30 years of life drawing, with private and studio models
- Four years as a hand colourist for Tinakori Gallery (now Page/Blackie)
Prior:
- B.Arch and B.B.Sc at Victoria under John Gray and Prof Helen Tippett
- Studied art at Wellington College under Philip Markham
- Born 1967 and raised in Brooklyn, Wellington
- Descendant of Polish Jewish immigrants arriving in Temuka in 1864
I have a working knowledge of how people interact with the built environment. I want to breathe that understanding into my paintings, the experience of historic buildings, of Wellington streetscapes. My approach is to use large canvases, cinematic compositions, deep lighting, lucid colour-space and spatial relationships. The effect is intentionally sculptural. My inspirations come from renaissance masters, New Zealand documentary and moving images, perhaps a combination of Canaletto and Ans Westra.