Ian Maginnis
Born 1977 in Kilkeel, Co. Down on Ireland's east coast, Ian is from a family of four generations of seafarers. He went to sea from an early age aboard his father’s trawler and painted what he saw. His development as a painter has undoubtedly been accelerated by two key factors. The first is a degree in Colour Chemistry that has given him a very thorough understanding of colour. The second is a number of years spent working with the world’s leading artists’ material manufacturer, Winsor & Newton.
On graduation Ian’s first job was with a carpet manufacturer as a colour technologist. This role enabled him to steadily refine his colour perception, primarily through working with a highly accurate colour computer and spectrophotometer (an instrument for measuring colour). It was whilst on placement in South Africa with this company that he met his wife Janelle.
He then joined Winsor & Newton, London, as a Research & Development Chemist. This placed him in a laboratory with some of the world’s foremost authorities on artists? materials. He was then promoted to the position of Painting and Technical Advisor and communicated key technical issues and developments to artists worldwide, a role that he very much enjoyed.
It became clear that the London climate was contributing to his wife Janelle’s quite serious health problems. They decided to move to her native South Africa where she has subsequently returned to full health. The move has meant that almost all of Ian’s time is spent painting but he still makes time to answer artists’ technical enquiries from the Winsor & Newton website and occasionally returns to Europe to be present for artists’ material exhibitions.
The world's foremost marine artists, past and present, such as Montague Dawson, Steven Dews and Terry Bailey he lists as key influences, along with the imposing images of rugged seascapes, people and boats of the west of Ireland by the Irish artists Paul Henry and John Skelton. Ian exhibits with the primary marine specialist galleries in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and United States.
Throughout his career the compulsion to continue to draw and paint the world’s most beautiful vessels has never left him. He recounts,
Artist's Statement
What I am doing now is really just the sketches that I used to do as a child, but now my training and practise has enabled me to "polish" these sketches to a much higher degree through the use of colours that have a deep, jewel like vibrancy. I would like to think that the image has moved from being like that of an old black and white television to a state of the art plasma screen.
