Lewis MacKenzie (b. 1981) is a contemporary impressionist painter based near Glasgow in Scotland. His work features in numerous private collections and has appeared in exhibitions by the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, The Royal Glasgow Institute and the Paisley Art Institute, as well as in several private art galleries in Glasgow, Edinburgh and London. Most recently, he has appeared on Sky Portrait Artist of the Year, been shortlisted for the Inaugural Scottish Landscape Awards (2023), and was awarded the Murray and McGregor Prize at the Scottish Prize for Fine Art (2023). An art school drop-out, Lewis trained as a biologist and worked for several years in a cancer lab before rekindling his life-long love of drawing and painting in the early 2010s. He draws influences from the masters of past eras, such as Velázquez, Vermeer, Guthrie, Sargent, and the Boston School Impressionists. His interests range from portraiture to still life and landscape.
STATEMENT
I am a contemporary impressionist painter, which is to say that I am a painter of light. I work primarily within the tradition of naturalistic representational painting, because I feel that this art-form is timeless and has the power to speak simply and directly to universal aspects of human experience. You could say that my paintings are an attempt to communicate my care for the world and my endless fascination with its visual aspect. To me, the visual world is a symphony of unaccountable and astonishing richness - even the most tawdry or quotidian subject can be a source of wonder and amazement. In my work, I try to draw forth the poetic and musical resonances present in the visual impression – the rhythm and harmony of shape and colour that exist almost anywhere one cares to look for them. I want the viewer to understand something of what it feels like to look through my eyes, and to recognise the power of light to transform an ordinary subject into an object of joy, longing, sorrow or sublimity.
