How do we find meaning in someone else’s past? For Scottish artist Calder MacKay, photographs aren’t just records – they’re emotional objects; fragments that carry memory, intimacy, and questions about masculinity and identity. Since graduating from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, Calder has been exploring the space between painting and photography, layering family archives with found images to create works that resonate far beyond their original context.
We spoke with him about his time at DJCAD, a recent pull to cyanotype prints, how travelling has shaped his process, and why ambiguity is central to how he wants people to experience his art.
You’ve been busy since graduating from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design (DJCAD) over in Dundee. What do you remember most from your time at the school?
My time at DJCAD taught me a lot, the course & facilities itself gave you total freedom to pursue all ideas that came to you. The technicians and staff were great but more than all of that, were the people you spent every day with, the people that you’d share a studio space with. They see your work grow and develop as closely as anyone and can help you chose where to go next. Doing your undergrad you’re in such a naïve state, everything seems like the most profound concept you’ve ever had until you look back on it a couple months later and can’t imagine why painting the Teletubbies would be the brightest idea. But it’s all these experiments that get you to where you ultimately need to go. It wasn’t until my final year where I started making any work, I was remotely happy with. It gave me a lot though and I really loved my time in Dundee.
Has your style, subject matter, or process changed since leaving DJCAD?
I think in some ways it has and some ways it hasn’t. My process, more recently I’ve began to experiment with the cyanotype print, which has been a lot of fun. Using it as a sort of underpainting, to get a printed basis to work over top, has been great. My reference images are still mainly film photography, while during my undergrad this mostly came from my own family archives, now I have used a lot of found imagery from street markets and shops that I’ve come across while travelling. I find it interesting to question the unknown with my version of the known. These images are like windows to a past I’ll never know. Some of the figures are strangers, some are my closest relatives. Being able to find commonality within the two can help us understand how we can share in a collective past. Not as a call to return to the past but to question what we’ve replaced it with.
You were awarded the RSA David Michie Travel Award which took you to Budapest. How did you use your time there?
Yeah, as a result I was able to spend a good chunk of my summer in Budapest examining how the older male generation of the city, find healthier ways to garner a sense of community, in comparison to Scotland. So, during my time there I took a lot of film photographs which would later turn into paintings, of older men out in the city enjoying the company of other men. Most of the images I’ve used were taken at the many hot spring baths scattered around the city, that made for a great backdrop to document and understand these individuals and how they socialise.
Does your academic research feed into or diverge from your studio practice – given your dissertation on 21st-century masculinity in Scotland is being published independently.
At the time of writing my dissertation, masculinity and men in general were a central theme to my research practice that also fed into my studio-based works. I have continued to research these topics and gender in a more general sense, attempting to step back and begin to understand how these parameters can be dismantled, shaped and reimagined. I think it is always important for an artist to have a consistent research method of enquiry to underpin your works, or at least to know where you can situate your work in a contemporary context. Whether that means going to galleries to see what’s being made today or delving into works of the past finding new works from artists you’ve loved for years. It can all help you make much more honest work, that’s true to your interests.
You describe your practice as existing in the space between painting and photography. How do you decide when a piece leans more toward one medium than the other?
A lot of the time more recently while I’ve been creating cyanotype prints, some of these prints I feel should stay as prints. I am a painter primarily but some of the content within an image or the framing of it, lend better to being left as is. However, some feel unfinished for whatever reason, and that’s when the paint comes out. Then the real challenge begins of knowing when a painting is done. I like to think of these photographs not as static records, but as emotional objects, fragments that invite reflection, projection and reinterpretation. How to best convey the profound delicacy and intangible shared sentimentality of these found archives. Why can we feel a sense of familiarity in someone else’s past? How does context, memory, and proximity shape our responses?
When someone first discovers your work, what do you hope they notice or feel?
Anything at all really, I think my key interest is what you as a viewer individually bring to the work and it’s that meeting of content and predisposed context that can allow for something ambiguous to become deeply personal. I like to treat ambiguity as a generative space, one where viewers are invited to sit with their reactions, question their origins, and consider why something resonates. The work becomes a mirror, reflecting not just what we see, but what we carry.
Now that you are studying at the RCA, are there any new directions that you are most excited to explore?
Yes, I’ve recently been accepted onto a Painting Masters course at the RCA, which is very exciting. Just to have the opportunity to study for another full year in London. A place that is teaming with new opportunities for a young artist. Also, the course itself being regarded in the way that it is, being surrounded by so many amazing painters and creatives, you have no idea how much those kinds of spaces can help you. I’m just eager to get started and create some new work, that feels fresh enough to keep me excited to paint every day.
And finally, if you could pass on one bit of advice to another young artist, what would it be?
I guess just keep going. The industry itself can feel like there is no room left to make any sort of considerable mark, but it’s all just set up to look like that. I am in no ways qualified to tell you what to do or what to think, but if you really want to make art and have a genuine drive to pursue it to the best of your ability then just keep going with it. It’s, the kind of field that isn’t very gracious, but you need to learn to be okay with things not happening overnight. If you put enough effort into anything, you’ll eventually get better at it. Arts just the same. The path there might not be that direct, but it all works itself out in the end.
Big thanks to Calder for taking time out of his busy life to chat with us. You can find his gallery collection online here.
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