Hunter McLean

My paintings are concerned with animal and human cohabitation and humans’ attempts to place it within an ontological certainty. Using the traditional medium of oil painting, I seek to subvert the narratives of existence built by modern science and religion.

Animals are subjectified as figures in my paintings, and they exist as mystical others, mediums between us and an alienated nature. They become icons and gatekeepers of the space contained within the paintings. Breaking up the natural landscape into geometrical patterns and digital distortions, they reveal our simultaneous fascination and revulsion from nature. Within this narrative, animal and man fluctuate between divine and mortal, harmonious and chaotic, peaceful and violent in a way that defies the traditional linear narratives of man the hunter, and man the God-appointed steward of nature.

            The geometrical, fractured imagery serves as a tense middle ground between ourselves, the disappearing wild, and the evolution of our relationship with and definition of nature.