About

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Navigating our human psyche and its contradictions that bind our unwavering connection to ecology and bionomics through drawing, painting and print. My practice focusses predominantly on the elements of the social and physical landscape that feed our psyche and develop our ego. I use botanics in my work inspired by the paintings of Rachel Ruysch, which carry with them symbolism, mythology and properties essential to human life. Combining objects with botanicals to question our muddied language surrounding commodity, functionality, and conditioned environments.

My paintings represent stories from the past. Tales exaggerated and told over and over until you know them as part of your own heritage. It is through these stories, our human experience and combined psyche, we shape our social and physical landscape. My paintings are sourced from found home videos, using selected stills to create a digital collage. They become a reflection of the lives lived, intermingled in a thread of story and a thread of memory. 

Within my practice, I commit a large amount of time to foraging and understanding the composition of botany within our landscape. This element of researching and documenting the land is as much a part of the artwork itself. Utilising visual language in order to generate a fully formed narrative of our own lives and the answers to our history that lie in the land itself.

Artist’s CV

Awards and Recognition

  • Contemporary Art Collectors Artist Program, 2024

  • Alasdair Gray Saltire Bursary Award 2019

  • Shortlisted Aon Community Arts Award; 2019

 Exhibitions

  • Lost In-Land; Solo show; The Art Space, CassArt; Glasgow; September 2024

  • Slow Function; Solo Show; SALT SPACE; AXIOM BUILDING; GLASGOW; MARCH 2023

  • Anonymous Drawings; ZAK,ZENTRUM FUR AKTUELLE KUNST, GALLERY UPPER FLOOR; BERLIN; JUNE 2022 - SEPTEMBER 2022

  • Aon Community Arts Award; The Cheesegrater - Leadenhall Building; London; June 2018 – August 2019

  • Best of Degree Show; Six Foot Gallery; Glasgow; June – September 2018

  • Industrial Landscape; Glasgow School of Art Degree Show; Glasgow; June 2018 Series Three; Glue Factory; Glasgow; April 2017

  • 25% Extra; Laurieston Arches; Glasgow; June 2016

  • Let’s Limbo; Swg3; 100 Eastvale Place; Glasgow; June 2016

  • PAT Tested; McLellan Galleries; Glasgow; March 2016

  • Am I An Artist; Tramway; Glasgow; October 2015

  • Paradise; Void Oid Gallery; SWG3; Glasgow; June 2015

 Commissions

  • Album Cover – LOWREE; 2022

  • Album Cover - Glasgow composer - 2019

  • Glasgow Life - Southside City Way Cycle Lane Public Art Commission; 2019

 Education

  • 2018
    Glasgow School of Art : Ba(Hons) Painting and Printmaking

  • 2015
    Tramway Visual Arts Studio : Portfolio Preparation

 

Publications

·       Contemporary Art Collectors; 2024 Artist Program; 2024;

https://www.contemporary-art-collectors.com/interviews/claire-carden-mcginlay?rq=claire%20carden%20mcginlay

·       Horst und Edeltraut; Ccarden McGinlay studio art practice; 2019;
Horst Und Edeltraut Interview

  • The Glasgow Guardian; Art and Anxiety; Rachel Boyd; 2015

 

Freelance + Community Projects

  • Edinburgh Printmakers; EP SPACES Officer : April 2022 - PRESENT

  • Studio Assistant for Ross Muir Art; August 2019 – March 2022

  • Founder of Stills and Paint Workshop; May 2019 – Present

  • Director and Founding Member of Salt Space CIC; June 2019 – March 2020

  • Workshop Leader and founding Member Book of Nudes Life Drawing - 2019