IanMacLeodART

​Born and raised in Montreal, Canada, I have loved drawing from a very early age. Eschewing the coloring book, I always opted for a blank piece of paper to create my own characters and worlds. Upon the suggestion of my grandmother, I began to draw birds from the field guide kept at our family cottage. From that point on, my affinity for depicting avian wildlife in its various forms has continued to develop to this day.

By the age of 10, I was enrolled at the La Palette School of Art in Beaconsfield, Quebec. Under the tutelage of the watercolorist Renate Heidersdorf, I developed my technique and composition while learning various mediums such as acrylics, pencil drawing, charcoal, pastels, silk painting and watercolors.

In 2006, I enrolled in Print Media in the Fine Arts Department of Concordia University. Over the next 3 years, I learned such printing disciplines as intaglio, lithography and silk screening while also exploring the cyber arts of digital printing, sound design and video production. While at Concordia, I gained an appreciation for abstraction and the value of color and texture as entities in their own right.

Since 2013, my work focuses on a stark black and white esthetic, influenced by the likes of M.C. Escher and Bill Reid, to create bold, texturally rich, iconic images that echo the beauty and form found in nature. It is a technique that I have developed and continue to explore, that uses black pens and markers, hand drawn on paper and wood panels. Each image is scanned and digitized in order to create various prints to be framed for your home, stickers to decorate your cellphone, skateboard or notebook, and even t-shirts for you to wear!

Thank you for your interest in my work and for stopping by my shop!