Ian MacLeod

Born in Montreal in 1982, Ian MacLeod has loved drawing from a very early age. Eschewing the coloring book, he always opted for a blank piece of paper to create his own characters and worlds. Upon the suggestion of his grandmother, Ian began to draw birds from the field guide kept at the family cottage. From that point on, Ian’s affinity for depicting avian wildlife in their various forms has continued to develop to this day. By age 10, Ian was enrolled at the La Palette School of Art in Beaconsfield, Quebec. Under the tutelage of the watercolorist Renate Heidersdorf, he developed his technique and composition while learning various mediums such as acrylics, charcoal, pastels, silk painting and watercolors. In 2006, Ian enrolled in Print Media in the Fine Arts Department of Concordia University. Over the next 3 years he learned such printing disciplines as intaglio, lithography and silk screening while also exploring the cyber arts of digital printing, sound design and video production. While at Concordia, Ian gained an appreciation for the abstraction and the value of color and texture as entities in their own right. Today, Ian’s work uses a stark black and white esthetic, influenced by the likes of M.C. Escher and Bill Reid, to create bold and texturally rich images that echo the beauty and form found in nature.