William Mackinnon (b. 1978, Melbourne) lives and works between Ibiza, the UK, and Australia. Mackinnon’s landscape paintings are what the artist calls ‘psychological landscapes’, drawing on personal experience of the world he inhabits. They are works of memory and discovery, of the familiar and the unknown – combining the real and the imaginary to transform everyday experiences from mundane to an enigmatic other. Guided by recurring motifs of the road with all its cracks and potholes; of headlights and reflecting street signs, Mackinnon’s work plays on oppositions – light and darkness; comfort and threat; that which is deeply personal, yet profoundly universal.
After completing studies at Melbourne University in the early 2000s Mackinnon interned at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice and at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. He then completed a post-graduate diploma at the Cheslea School of Art and Design, London in 2006 and a Masters of Visual Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne in 2008. Mackinnon then worked as an artist in residence at Mangkaja Arts in Fitzroy Crossing, Western Australia and as a field officer for the Papunya Tula artists in the Northern Territory.
Mackinnon has held regular solo exhibitions for over a decade and been a regular finalist in the Archibald and Wynne Prizes of late. He was included in the NGV Triennial at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne in 2017, and exhibited in Bewilderness: Recent Acquisitions at the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide in 2022-23.
His work is held in numerous private and public collections, including the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Parliament House Art Collection, Canberra; HOTA, Gold Coast, Queensland; State Library of Victoria, Melbourne; Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne, Melbourne; and Griffith University, Brisbane.
Image: William Mackinnon Family tree/Lucky and Stella, Formentera, 2024-25, acrylic, oil and automotive enamel on linen (diptych), 200 x 300cm
