This depiction of Purnululu may seem like a Surrealist fantasy or a set for a space-wars film, but it is firmly based in the reality of one of the wonders of western Australia's outback: an area of giant, bell-shaped rock mounds some 350 million years old, striped black and orange with lichen and silica and known locally as "The Bungles". Maclaurin chartered a helicopter for an hour to allow him to make aerial sketches of the rock formations and to give him a sense of scale. Since painting this work he has lived in Australia and gained residency there. 

Robert Maclaurin, born 1961

Born in London, Maclaurin trained at Edinburgh College of Art from 1979 to 1984. His work in landscape-based, with rich surface texture and high colouration in the Edinburgh tradition of belle peinture. Several awards and scholarships have allowed him to travel widely; these include a Turkish Government Scholarship (1984-85), a Scottish Arts Council Bursary (1988), a British Council Travel Award (1988), and a Sir Robert Menzies Fellowship (1995-96) that enabled him to go to Australia. His travels have provided inspiration for his landscapes, which are not, however, topographical records of places visited but rather paintings of the memories and feelings of a place, often produced long after the original journey. Maclaurin's early work studied the loneliness and vulnerability of the individual and was characterized by a large human figure set against a dramatic landscape backdrop, but over the years the figure has shrunk and appears dwarfed before the strongly geometric shapes of the landscape behind. Today most of his works are non-figurative.
During his Menzies fellowship Maclaurin spent eighteen months based at a studio north of Melbourne, and this experience provided the original images and inspirations for his recent large-scale works relating to Australia. These bear witness to his deep empathy with the country's extraordinary scenery, a closeness born of his many exploratory trips to each of its state. To make his on-the-spot records when out of doors he paints in oils on small panels of wood as many others have done. The subsequent paintings are distillations of memories encapsulating his reactions to space, colour, light and vegetation.
In 1999 he had a major solo exhibition in the Talbot Rive Art Gallery at the Edinburgh International Festival.