Graduate of the Glasgow School of Art (MLitt Fine Art Practice), reciever of the RSA 2021 PANDEMIC award, Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant (2018) and the RSA John Kinross Travel Scholarship to Florence (2016), and with several international exhibtiosn under his belt; Blair McLaughlin shows a mature talent rarely evident in an artist so young.
Situated at the intersection of violence, politics and postmodernity, McLaughlin's paintings challenge one to question situated notions of shared space, civil society and time itself. This is work which perverts and reassembles art history, whether Gentileschi, Courbet or Caravaggio. Its tactile nature – boils of thick oil paint swell on the canvases of even the artists most serene subjects – distinctive of an impressionistic approach to reference and the visual arts canon.
