About Christopher Mackay

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Portrait of Christopher Mackay (June, 2019)
Christopher Mackay

I’ve always loved to draw

After getting my BA (psych/English/physics), I took the first year of the 4-year Fine Arts programme at Mount Allison University. In my short time there, I was privileged to study under Thaddeus Holownia, Tom Henderson, Dan Steeves, Virgil Hammock, John Asimakos, and David Silverberg.

Working as a designer scratched my creative itch just enough so that making art got back-burnered. While I’ve been immersed in the world of digital imaging since before Photoshop had layers — and shipped on floppies! — my artwork never made the leap from paper to pixels (despite attempts dating back to Fractal Design Painter and WACOM tablets in the mid-1990s).

In late 2014 I happened upon a great book on sketching that showed me a way back to drawing, despite the decades that had passed and the hesitation I felt.

About my work

When starting a new piece I rarely have any theme or goal or message in mind. I give in to my whims, which I’ve learned not to question. It can be a shape, a colour, a memory, or an idea — it doesn’t matter.

For me, thinking can be a trap; the opposite of starting or doing. I’ll figure out what a piece means (if anything) after I’ve done it. Maybe it will only have meaning as part of a body of work. Maybe it won’t mean anything at all.

I’m happy to leave deciding what things mean to someone smarter.

Design and art

The overlapping of my work as a web designer and the art community has been rewarding. Among others, I have designed websites for

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